Doctoral Dissertation Research: Prevalence and preservation of dental calculus at the National Museum of Natural History: Implications for biomolecular preservation in museums

University Of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman OK

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research will assess the impact of historical decision-making processes on the Biological Anthropology collections at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). In addition to being snapshots of once living populations, biological anthropology collections are valuable repositories of past anthropologists' collection management strategies. The legacies and decisions, like ones made by Ales Hrdlicka at the NMNH, changed how collections of human remains were formed, accessioned, and cared for in museums. Understanding how collections were treated in the past will help museums make informed decisions about destructive sampling requests, allow researchers to optimize study design, and help to establish museum care standards with modern scientific methods (e.g. DNA sequencing) in mind. This project will contribute to STEM education by providing training opportunities for undergraduates through the Smithsonian Fellowship Program and Co-PI Austin's dissertation research. Additionally, the public will be engaged at events like the "Expert Is In" talk series at the NMNH, presentations at the NMNH and department presentations at the University of Oklahoma. To investigate the impact of changing collection care strategies on biological anthropology collections, this project will focus on biomolecular (DNA) preservation in dental calculus (calcified plaque). Dental calculus from anthropological collections has been used to address important questions concerning the health, diet, and population dynamics of past peoples. However, variation in dental calculus development and preservation across human populations is underexplored. By taking into consideration multiple lines of evidence (i.e. ancient DNA sequencing, skeletal and morphological data, and archival information) from temporally and geographically representative collections, this study will investigate 1) how environmental factors contribute to dental calculus formation and 2) how collection care decisions by past biological anthropologists have affected the long-term storage of collections. As a world-leading museum, the NMNH offers extraordinary collections with spatial and temporal depth to address these two objectives and will provide valuable information to other collections around the world. 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.