CSBR: Natural History: Conservation and Curation of the Milton Sanderson Dominican Amber Collection at the Illinois Natural History Survey

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Dominican amber is famous for the beautifully preserved fossils it contains - ancient animals, plants, fungi, and even bacteria, dating back to the Miocene epoch approximately 16-18 million years ago. To date, over 1,000 species have been discovered in this remarkable amber. Scientific study of Dominican amber began with an NSF-funded expedition by Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) entomologist Milton Sanderson, who visited the island in 1959 to study beetles. Having learned of rich amber deposits he set out to find them with the help of local guides and collected a large sample that he brought back to the INHS. The following year he published a short paper reporting his discovery, thereby kickstarting scientific study of this ancient ecosystem. Sanderson's collection is therefore, tremendously important both scientifically and historically, yet remains unstudied, still unsorted and unprocessed in the original five-gallon buckets in which it was collected. Years of substandard storage has taken its toll on the amber, which has undergone significant oxidation and is now incredibly fragile. This project will allow the collection to finally be screened for inclusions, conserved using state-of-the-art resin embedding techniques, curated, and digitized. This will unlock a wealth of important data concerning ancient biodiversity, ecology, and climate that is currently hidden and inaccessible within the collection. In addition to making this data available to the scientific community and the public for the first time, it will also provide valuable experience to graduate and undergraduate students beginning their careers in science. The Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) at the University of Illinois is home to the Milton Sanderson Dominican Amber Collection (MSDAC). In addition to its historical importance as the first substantial collection of Dominican amber, the MSDAC is hugely significant scientifically. It comprises a large (ca. 70 kg) bulk sample of amber that remains almost entirely unprocessed; i.e., it still resides in the five-gallon buckets in which it was collected and has yet to be screened for fossils. Aside from its size, the unscreened nature of the collection means that it has not been subject to collector bias and no inclusions have been discarded, as typically happens in collections made commercially and sold to museums or private collectors. As a result, the MSDAC presents a unique opportunity to study an unbiased collection that promises to deliver a more complete picture of the paleobiodiversity and paleoecology of the Early Miocene Dominican amber forest. Unfortunately, decades of substandard storage have resulted in substantial oxidation damage putting the collection at significant risk. This project will focus on the stabilization, conservation, curation and digitization of the MSDAC. A state-of-the-art vacuum resin embedding technique, in which specimens are embedded in a high-quality synthetic resin, will be used to stabilize the oxidized amber. Trimming and polishing of stabilized specimens will allow identification of inclusions and facilitate photomicrography of specimens for inclusion in an online database. Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in every step of the process, thereby helping to train the next generation of scientists. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.