MAKING ACCESSIBLE 100,000 INVERTEBRATE FOSSILS FROM THE ALABAMA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTION

The fossil invertebrate collection of the Alabama Museum of Natural History (ALMNH) is the largest one in Alabama with ~500,000 specimens. However, this collection is poorly known among researchers and the general public because most attention has been given to vertebrate fossils for many decades. This lack of knowledge is also reflected in the comparatively low number of fossil invertebrate records in our online database, Arctos, which is also shared with iDigBio and GBIF. An important part of this collection is historic, mostly consisting of molluscan specimens collected ~100 years ago from various localities in the south-eastern USA. Most of this collection consists of exquisitely preserved Paleocene and Eocene mollusks from Alabama, late Cenozoic mollusks from Florida, and Cambrian trilobites from Alabama and Georgia. Most of these historic collections have not been adequately housed and the same applies to the type specimens. Thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS grant IGSM-249486-OMS-21), we have made substantial improvements to the invertebrate fossil collection since the start of this project in September 2021. A main goal of this project is to save and make accessible 100,000 invertebrate fossils by verifying/updating associated metadata, digitizing data and labels, and photographing the specimens. Through July 2022, more than 80,000 specimens have been imaged and rehoused with the help of five student interns who spent up to 10 hours per week in the collections during the semesters, thereby enhancing their collection management skills. We also rehoused the type specimens in a new cabinet in a separate room within the collections for enhanced care and security while keeping them accessible for researchers. Furthermore, we have regularly highlighted the project on social media. The next steps in the project are to image the type specimens and more invertebrate specimens and to upload the records and associated images into Arctos in 2023. This will enhance the visibility and future use of the invertebrate collections.