Importance and role of neotaphonomic collections: the example of microvertebrate and experimental collection management

ABSTRACT

The development of taphonomy has improved our knowledge of site formation and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. It has also stimulated many neotaphonomic analyses that bring clues to some of the alterations and modifications processes of fossilisation and accumulations. This article aims to show that such neotaphonomic analyses and experiments, by generating a lot of valuable material and associate data, need to be integrated into official collections for future preservation. We will focus here upon two examples of neotaphonomic collections: 1 owl pellet microvertebrate collections and 2 collections resulting from experimental work (simulation and monitoring). We detail some problems for incorporating such new type of materials in Museums and some requirements for their curation. In the era of open science, there is a need to improve the management and curation of such unconventional collections to incorporate them into future classical comparative research, training and education as well as exhibitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Taphonomy
• predation
• experimentation
• fossilisation
• collections
• curation

Acknowledgments

We thanks Maria Paloma Sevilla Garcia for her constructive comments and encouragements at reading of this manuscript. Sandrine Grouard has kindly provided the photo of Figure 1. We also thank the support of the IRN TaphEN 0871 (Fosse P. & Brugal J.PDir.) as well as three anonymous reviewers for their positive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CNRS-INEE International Research Network IRN 0871 TaphEN (Taphonomy).