Field Museum

Community Science and Biodiversity

There are hundreds of thousands of bird specimens in Field Museum's collections. Take a look at some of the ways these specimens are prepared and stored so that scientists and researchers can access and study them! 

Museum Specimens - Birds

Scientists use many pieces of evidence to determine evolutionary relatedness between species. One of these is using species’ genomes to examine similarity and differences in the genetic code. 

Genomic Analysis

Specimen Preparation - Clearing and Staining

This artist's rendering depicts a creature that lived as early as 400 million years ago, the Trilobite. 

Prehistoric Specimens 

In this activity and the next one, you will label similarities and differences you see in these two lichen specimens using only your eyes. 

Why Genomic Analysis? Part 1

In this activity and the previous one, you will label similarities and differences you see in these two lichen specimens using only your eyes. 

Why Genomic Analysis? Part 2

In the last two activities, you attempted to identify differences in two lichen specimens using only your eyes. Was that an easy tasks? Based on your experience, hypothesize why it might be useful to utilize genomics when studying evolution. 

Using Genomic Data 

The Field Museum is home to millions of specimens from all over the world collected over the past hundred years and stored on-site in state of the art facilities.

Introduction to the Resource Kit

As you explore the modules in this kit, keep this graphic organizer open in a separate window. You can use the zoom, move, text or draw tools to take notes on what you learn about how museum collections can be and are used to study evolution and biodiversity!

Note Catcher

Herbarium sheets are a critical preservation tool that allowing scientists and plant-lovers to keep plant specimens from the field intact and ready to study for long periods of time. Learn more about what makes up an herbarium sheet looks like by exploring this image!

Specimen Preparation - Herbarium Sheets

Discover how researchers use Field Museum's millions of specimen to document and study evolution and the world's biodiversity.

Museum Collections and Research

Life Science

Science

Any good organization system needs a good storage solution, and Field Museum has lots of storage space! 

This image shows just a few of the hundreds of shelves in the Museum's bird collections in which bird specimens are organized and preserved. 

There are many ways bird and other museum specimens are prepared and preserved so they can be kept and stored for long periods of time without deteriorating. In the bird specimens pictured, all internal organs have been removed and stored separately to reduce degradation, and these skins have been stuffed with cotton.

This image shows a stuffed bird in which you can see the cotton poking through the bird's eye-hole. 

Every specimen in the collection also includes a tag with important information about the species, collection, and concession information (where the specimen came from, if it was donated or purchased from another individual or institution). Some of the museum's collections are over 100 years old! 

For some research studies, scientists need to inspect not only the skin, feathers, and organs of a bird specimen, but to take a look at the bones and skeletal system. To make this possible, these specimens' bones are cleared using flesh-eating beetles, a species of beetle that consume skin and muscle tissue, pictured here. Once the beetles have consumed the majority of the specimen's flesh, preparatory staff make the final cleaning touches and usable bones ready for research or then stored in the colleciton. 

Here are some bird skeletons that have been cleaned and prepared  by Museum staff, and organized according to which specimen they came form. 

Specimens can also be preserved by submerging them in jars with 70% ethyl alcohol solution. This allows researchers to access the organs and soft parts of the organism that would decay otherwise, to conduct organ tissue analysis or extract DNA.

Recall from earlier in this resource kit: What are some of the reasons scientists utilize genomic analysis?

The Northern Flicker is a species of woodpecker. 

Observe how this woodpecker's wings have been spread to showcase the speckled coloration across its wings and back. 

The Northern Flicker is a medium-sized bird of the woodpecker family. 

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Northern Flicker

The Northern flickers belly and interior wing coloration are bright and lighter in color than the back and exterior wings. Compare this coloration with the next bird specimen. What similarities or differences do you notice? 

Do you think coloration can be used as evidence to support common ancestry and evolution? Why or why not?

Like the Northern Flicker, the White-Throated sparrows belly and interior wings are lighter in color than it's back plumage. 

What hypotheses might you make for this difference in coloration? 

The white-throated sparrow is large relative to other sparrows, and can be found in woods, at forest edges, thickets, overgrown fields, parks, and woodsy suburbs. This specimen was found near McCormack Place in Chicago. 

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White-throated Sparrow

The White-Throated sparrow is a bird found in forests and forest edges. Observe this bird's dark grey-brown back coloration. 

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Museum Collections and Research

Museum Specimens - Birds

Birds in Drawer