Access to the Earth Sciences collections is temporarily unavailable to researchers as we transition to new collections spaces. Digital specimen scans are available for research. Please make requests through the relevant collections manager.
Invertebrate Paleontology
Collections Manager: Sarah Hennessey
With more than 90,100 individual cataloged specimens, the collection is focused most strongly on Ohio fossils, but it also includes specimens from elsewhere in North America and from Europe, Asia, and South America.
Paleobotany
Collections Manager: Sarah Hennessey
The paleobotany collection houses fossil plants from around the world, from the Precambrian (more than 542 million years ago) to the Pleistocene Epoch (as recently as about 10,000 years ago), sampling almost the entirety of the evolutionary history of plants during that span. It is also home to one of the world’s largest collections of modern African pollen, with more than 35,000 slides.
Vertebrate Paleontology
Collections Manager: Jeb Bugos
The vertebrate paleontology collection holds about 15,000 specimens, with a focus on locally collected Ohio specimens from the Pleistocene Epoch and the Late Devonian Period. The Cleveland Shale collection houses hundreds of specimens that can be used to reconstruct an ancient Ohio marine ecosystem. Fossils include placoderm fish like Dunkleosteus—Ohio’s state fossil fish—as well as bony fish and exceptionally preserved chondrichthyans. Additional highlights of the collection include early tetrapods and the holotypes of Nanotyrannus lancensis and Haplocanthosaurus delfsi.
Mineralogy
Collections Manager: Sarah Hennessey
With more than 41,000 cataloged specimens or groups of specimens from around the world, the mineralogy collections are historical as well as scientific. Some samples were collected as long ago as the early 1800s, and many of the ore deposit suites are from localities that no longer exist.
