The Survey Paleontological Collection includes a large cabinet of fossils
that was transported incorrectly, i.e., by moving it all at once instead of
drawer by drawer. The fossil were all in chipboard trays and accompanied by
paper labels, but none have numbers written directly on the shell. When the
cabinet was tilted, some of the fossils were jostled into adjacent trays,
always in the same direction. In some cases, it is easy to tell which
fossils jumped from tray to tray; in others, it is not. The worst cases are
those where specimens of the same species, but from different localities,
were housed next to each other. I've been afraid to move or catalog
anything in this cabinet. I can't just discard the specimens; they
represent an entire stratigraphic interval and many were collected from
localities that will never be accessible again. What's the best course of
action?
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
Curator, Paleontological Collection
Geological Survey of Alabama