Rock Hammer | Page 14

Curating your Personal Collection

Paul Mayer, Fossil Invertebrate Collections Manager, The Field Museum - Chicago, Illinois.

Congratulations! You have just placed it at the center of your display case or above your mantle for all to see, your latest and most amazing fossil find, but now what? You are ready to regale your visitors with the story of how you discovered this great fossil. All the details are still fresh in your mind:

- Camping in a remote area with no Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones.

- Sleeping on the ground for a week before discovering a fossil under your ground pad.

- Struggling up that hill, or wait a second...really more like a mountainside.

- Fighting through poison ivy and stinging nettles.

- Avoiding a 3-foot gartersnake, or was it more like a 6-foot rattler?

- Enduring black flies and mostquitos, but you found your perfect specimen.

With all those happy memories still fresh in your mind, this is the time to document your fossil. Record your information into a catalog of your fossils. I know what you are saying to yourself, "why bother, I will always remember this trip"; and you will at least for a while, but over time details become fuzzy and some things completely forgotten. I cannot stress enough - please write it all down! Someday you may want to give your fossil collection to your kids, relatives, a museum or university. Without this information, the specimens lose much of their value.

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