R. Glenn Northcutt Collection
About
The R. Glenn Northcutt Collection of Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy and Embryology is the world’s largest and most taxonomically diverse collection of histological preparations of developing and adult vertebrate brains mounted on glass slides. It comprises an estimated 500,000 histological sections and whole mounts mounted on ca. 33,000 slides to reveal the microscopic anatomy of the nervous system and related tissues. The collection offers abundant research opportunities for studies in comparative neuroscience and is a preeminent potential source of content for teaching comparative neuroanatomy and related topics.
History
The Northcutt Collection is a unique and irreplaceable resource for the study of vertebrate development and neuroanatomy. Most specimens constitute serially sectioned whole or partial brains for comparative cytoarchitectonic studies. There also are series of entire heads and hundreds of serially sectioned embryos representing 12 genera for studies of the development of sensory systems and cranial nerves.
Assembled by Prof. Glenn Northcutt between 1963 and 2014, the collection includes valuable series prepared by other neuroanatomists, including J. B. Johnston, David Senn, Othmar Solnitzky and Wolf Hetzel. The collection is unique in its array of taxa: the 245 genera represent all major vertebrate clades and two key outgroups, acorn worms and cephalochordates. Strengths include hagfishes, lampreys, chondrichthyans, basal actinopterygians, basal sarcopterygians (including all genera of lungfishes and Latimeria), amphibians, Sphenodon, most families of squamates, turtles, crocodilians, marsupials and primates. Prof. Northcutt was a leading researcher on the evolution and development of the vertebrate nervous system. His analyses of the neural crest, forebrain and associated structures revolutionized the study of vertebrate origins and diversification.
The collection contains the voucher specimens for most of the histological preparations that were the basis for his 270 research publications and those of other scientists who utilized it (Hanken et al. 2025). In 2015 the collection was relocated to Cornell University in the care of Prof. William Bemis, a former postdoctoral fellow and collaborator. In 2019, ownership of the collection was formally transferred to the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Projects
Collection Transfer
The physical collection and associated data were transferred from Cornell University to the MCZ in 2019.
Conservation and Barcoding
A conservation effort is underway, including a condition assessment, cleaning, and barcoding, to ensure curation of every slide.
Imaging and Discoverability
High-resolution whole-slide images of the entire collection are being prepared with funds provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences. All whole-slide images are accessible from MCZbase and from MorphoSource, and images of individual sections of brains of a small number of species are hosted by BrainMaps.org.
Digitization Videos
The following short videos describe the process used to digitize histological slides in the Northcutt Collection, beginning with initial accessioning of the collection at MCZ and ending with digital whole-slide images uploaded to and accessible from MCZbase and MorphoSource. We hope that these videos will be of particular use to institutions that are interested in digitizing their own slide collections and serving the resulting images via the Internet.
