Week One: The Story Begins

Hello all!

Welcome to the 2017 Mapes Collection Blog run by us, the interns. We are all thrilled to be able to share our adventures with you! Before we go any further how about some introductions:

Alex - Is a graduate from Long Beach State in California. A self proclaimed "geology nerd" Alex is all about exploring nature and finding some cool rocks along the way. So far he likes California better than New York, but we shall see if he changes his mind by the end of the summer. In his free time this summer he plans to eat lots of peanut butter and slowly stroll the city to see the sights.





Ernesto - Is a graduate from the University of Chicago. Ernesto's favorite exhibit in the museum so far is by far the singular Trilobite display. When not consuming ice cream, he is always in search of a good slice of pineapple pizza. His goal for his days off is to find some good ambient music to enjoy.







Keara - Is a Senior at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Her inner six year old is thrilled to be able to be behind the scenes and going through the 'employees only' doors. When not writing numbers on very small specimens, she enjoys traveling and teaching her cat how to do tricks. Her goal this summer is to not get lost and to domesticate a Central Park squirrel (which she is going to name Oscar).





Minda - Is a Senior at Earlham College in Indiana. Minda has worked in collections of all sorts across the United States and is eager to work with Paleontology collections this summer. In her free time she knits extinct animals and enjoys a good glass of water. Her goal for the summer is to legitimately get lost in New York City, and find the best hiding spot in the museum.




Ryan - Is a Junior at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Being from the Midwest, Ryan only feels at home near the buffalo exhibits in the museum. When he's not working, he enjoys exploring all NYC has to offer and working on his stand-up comedy routine *ba-dum tss*. This summer he plans to find and consume the best food New York has to offer.





Sarah - Is a Super-Senior at Montana State University in Bozeman. With a wealth of experience, she can appreciate everything about this museum. When not rocking a cool hat or cracking a quick joke, she can be found teaching the art of procrastination. Her goal for this summer is to avoid as many cameras as possible and replace pictures of herself with increasingly intricate origami.




We will all be taking turns to write the blog this summer and share with you what we encounter during our internship. With this week being our first week we have been plenty busy. Between getting everything set up to start working and beginning our massive task to help rehouse, database, and catalogue the Royal Mapes Invertebrate Collections.

This Collection has been worked on for the past couple years, and it is our job to continue this process. This collection contains about 540,000 fossils that need better storage and organization. Needless to say our workspace has been busy since day one!

Alex and Sarah (in her cool hat) hard at work
gluing labels onto fossils and making notes
along the way.

Most of our drawers haven't been touched yet so it is our job to assign numbers to each object and then gather all the data and field notes on said object. For example some of our trays can look like this:

An example of what an average drawer looks like.

The orange dots are the numbers we glue on to keep

 track of the specimens.

We also found out that as part of our internship we get to visit other collections throughout the AMNH. This week we saw the frozen tissue labs and got to learn about the 100,000+ samples they store there. These samples can be sent out to scientists for all sorts of genetic studies. 

These tissues are kept in large vats that are cooled

with liquid nitrogen, which makes a nice cloud 

when the vats are opened.

We also toured the vertebrate paleontology collections and saw just how lucky we are to be dealing with smaller specimens. We got to see lots of skulls and old bones, some of which have still yet to be fully documented.

These are skulls of mammoths and mastodons. Having

worked with mammoths before I was thrilled

to be near them again.

 All in all this has been a busy week full of new experiences with plenty of hands on learning! We cannot wait to continue to update everyone with what we come across and see during our time here!

Until next week,

Ryan and the rest of the Interns