University of Colorado (University of Colorado Museum of Natural History)

The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History will digitize 1,100 fossils from its Paleogene mammal collection from the Rocky Mountain region, creating 4,400 three-dimensional images for its collections database and for public access. While specimen records have been entered into the museum's new database, fewer than 100 have associated images. The museum will capture and clean the high-resolution 3D images of the jaws and teeth of 1,100 fossil mammal species, archive large image files in the University's Petalibrary (for use as e-loans to researchers), publish smaller image files in their collections database, and format all fossil vertebrate specimen records and images using standards that make them sharable within the Integrated Digitized Biocollections public portal. By making the images available online, the museum will illuminate the largest, most utilized part of the collection for researchers, museum professionals, educators, and the general public, thereby increasing the number of users while decreasing the toll of usage on the specimens, and creating a baseline for monitoring their condition over time. The project will put the museum among the first to provide thousands of 3Dimages associated with the specimen records of Paleogene mammals, strengthening scholarship in its collection and providing a model for further digitization in the vertebrate collection.