ARCHIVES AND OUTREACH: THE EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY PUCHSTEIN COLLECTION

A curated fossil collection is an extraordinary resource for a university that may be used to spark interest through outreach, education, and research for students, faculty, and the community at large. In 2019, amateur paleontologist Richard Puchstein posthumously donated an impressive collection of vertebrate and invertebrate fossils to Eastern Kentucky University. These included mostly Paleozoic marine invertebrates, assorted pieces Cenozoic vertebrates, and Mesozoic freshwater invertebrates, in addition to an assortment of Phanerozoic fossils from all over the world. Unfortunately, the collection was donated in a mostly uncurated state, requiring extensive work. While some may have been previously identified some of the data on those specimens have been lost due to improper storage. Some were misidentified, with a fair bit being undiagnosed. Fossil identification has unsurprisingly been a focus, using in house and collaborative resources to diagnose specimens to our highest degree of certainty. After identification the specimen gets an identification number on a card that has all of the definitive information we have on it (taxon, horizon, locality, and age.) This is followed by storage, both where and how must be considered as to preserve both the fossil itself and the information about the specimen. These data are recorded in both a logbook housed in the collection center and in an online database. Specimens are stored in numbered and secured cabinets in both the collections designated room and within classrooms. Certain specimens also require special housing precautions such as needing humidity control, being extreme fragile, or just due to large size. After the work has been done to preserve both the specimen and the information about it the goal then becomes visibility. There are three ways the collections serves the University by being more visible: with poster shows and an online presence it becomes known to more universities so more research could be done using these fossils, outreach programs getting K-12 students interested in paleo sciences, and by using the specimens as teaching aids in the classroom at Eastern Kentucky University.