The vertebrate paleontology assortment contains roughly eighty,000 cataloged specimens. The ‘traditional’ vertebrate classification scheme make use of evolutionary taxonomy where several of the taxa listed are paraphyletic , i.e. have given rise to another taxa which were given the identical rank. Vital holding include Late Triassic collections from North Carolina and Arizona, marine Cenozoic collections from North Carolina, and Cretaceous collections from North Carolina, Montana and Utah.

The Vertebrate Paleontology Collection contains eight holotypes and twelve paratypes. Their specimens derive mainly from the Cenozoic Era (last 65 million years), with more than 80% coming from about 1200 localities in Florida. Early Tertiary specimens embody the front third of the skeleton of the fossil whale Basilosaurus, one of the best specimen of this historic whale identified to science.

^ Rice, Howard C, Jr., “Jefferson’s Present of Fossils to the Museum of Natural Historical past in Paris,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, ninety five (1958): 597-627. Pleistocene specimens embrace the stays of Ice Age animals, such because the elephant-like mastodon.

A New Computer Program in Improvement for Reconstructing and Analyzing Tender Tissue Constructions in Fossil Vertebrates, Tracy Thomson & Mark DeBlois, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA. Many animals who lived alongside ancient humans, and hundreds extra who shared a world with our pre-human ancestors, are solely recognized by the bones they left behind, via the efforts of vertebrate paleontologists.

The museum holds the second-largest assortment of fossil specimens from Huge Bend Nationwide Park, starting from late Cretaceous dinosaur specimens to small mammals from the start of the Age of Mammals. The collection focuses on the state of Alabama, but additionally consists of important materials from other parts of the southeastern United States.