DYNAMIC CURATION WORKFLOW FOR CHALLENGING PALEONTOLOGY COLLECTIONS: CATALOGING THE FOSSIL SPECIMENS FROM WACO MAMMOTH NATIONAL MONUMENT

Waco Mammoth National Monument (WMNM), a Pleistocene assemblage of Columbian mammoths and other contemporaneous taxa, preserves the only known Columbian mammoth nursery herd. While the site was originally excavated by Baylor University (BU) from 1978 to 2002, the site became a unit of the National Park Service (NPS) in 2015. The enabling legislation stated that all specimens would be donated to the NPS. Working alongside the WMNM paleontologist and the BU Mayborn Museum collections manager, interns prepared the collection for donation. They photographed and inventoried the BU collection, cataloged in situ WMNM specimens, identified non-mammoth material, and conserved highly fragmented specimens. Once the donation was complete in summer 2024, the arduous task of cataloging over 1500 boxes of specimens and thousands of fragments began. Since the BU material was not cataloged, there was a unique opportunity to design a cataloging system from scratch that fit the unique needs of this collection. Development of the cataloging workflow required careful consideration of how the collection should be organized, what order specimens should be cataloged, and how to handle thousands of medium to small fragments. The collection was roughly organized by individual mammoths and by material that was washed out due to flash flooding over the 10+ year excavation. It became clear that poor excavation notes, lost specimen tags, and specimen fragmentation during excavation complicated the direct relationship of many of the fossils. Through detailed discussions, we determined that organizing the collection by individual mammoth was critical for this collection, therefore the cataloging process focused on the most complete specimens first. Concurrently with cataloging, continued fossil preparation focused on reducing the number of fragments, which we factored into our workflow design. This will be an ongoing process, but the formal curation of the WMNM Pleistocene collection is actively moving forward. This process has emphasized the importance of accurate field notes and specimen records for proper collections management, and that cataloging systems can be thoughtfully designed to serve the unique needs of a collection. This work will set the foundation to allow fossil data to be more accessible to scientists, interpretive staff, and the public for both research and outreach.