Dr. Royal Mapes visits AMNH

It's not every day that you get to meet a person who has a natural history collection named after them but this week we got to meet and work with Dr. Royal Mapes.

We began the week by listening to a talk that Dr. Mapes gave on his 50+ years of collecting. He told us stories about collecting the specimens starting with his initial travels to various collecting sites all the way through to how he had to pack up about 600 drawers to send to AMNH. It was nice to hear his stories from the sites, now they seem like so much more than just the names of places we put into the database.



After the talk we wasted no time and started asking Dr. Mapes all the questions we had. He was truly like a fossil whisperer. He was able to answer our questions within seconds whether it be a question about a location or a need for species clarification.



We took a break from the ammonites and questions on Wednesday and took a tour of Anthropology with John Hansen. He explained that the Anthropology Department is still very much a Victorian museum, both the collections themselves and how the building itself is set up. Then he showed us elaborate woven baskets, some even had feathers incorporated into them. And he showed us an exceptionally tiny woven basket that had to be housed in a vial. We also saw some fascinating artifacts from California, China, and Siberia.




Later in the week Dr. Mapes spoke to us about what he thinks his collection will mean for the future. Having it here at AMNH allows his collection to be available to people for many years to come. It is a huge source of reference material, a fossil library if you will, of Paleozoic cephalopods and once it is organized people will come and find answers and generate new questions. And with technology always advancing, we don't even know what information is locked away in this collection just waiting to be found. These specimens are a treasure trove full of potential for current and future researchers and it was a great opportunity to meet with the man behind it all. Thank you Dr. Mapes!