South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (Museum of Geology)

The Museum of Geology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology will process a newly acquired collection of 5,000 fossil specimens from the Richmond Hills sites in Lawrence County. Project activities will include physical and digital documentation of the specimens, entailing inventories of the material, stabilization of material requiring conservation, and the processing of collected matrix for the acquisition of new material. The project team will photograph the specimens to support the creation of digital records and data to be uploaded to the online iDigBio database of biological museum collections. Museum staff will work closely with graduate students throughout the project, providing them with practical training and experience in documentation, curation, digitization, and archiving of materials. This project will provide researchers and the public access to this collection while creating training opportunities for future paleontologists and museum professionals.