With the hiring of Fred Collier by the MCZ in 1991 the Department of Invertebrate Paleontology launched a project to completely renovate our million specimen collection. Our goals are to: (1) Assemble in high security cases the approximately 15,000 types and valuable specimens scattered throughout the collection; (2) Renovate the housing, and upgrade the organization of the substantial remainder of the collection; (3) Computerize the collection, including making it fully available on the Web. Work began with a three year NSF grant DEB-9321026, under which we achieved goal (1), and half of goal (2) (see the before and after pictures below). The housing of specimens is now complete, thanks to a smaller, but critial grant from NSF, and we are now concentrating on upgrading taxonomy, rehousing specimen groupings, and putting the remainder of the collections in to our database.

Before Renovation Photos:

After Renovation Photos: