Welcome to the Department of Museum Research and Collections!
We oversee the management and curation of the University of Alabama Museums collections and develop interdisciplinary research programs focusing on museum-based research. Browse this site to learn more about who we are and what we do.
Maybe you’ve seen the headlines: soon, hundreds of millions of cicadas will emerge after 17 years of living underground and swarm cities all over the eastern United States.
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Millions of cicadas are about to swarm the East Coast. Don’t panic! It’s totally normal. These cicadas, known as periodical cicadas, have been 6 feet underground for 17 years. From June to August, they will come above ground in waves in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.
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On May 6, 2020, Dr. John Abbott (Director of Museum Research & Collections) was a guest on WBRC’s Good Day Alabama to discuss “Murder Hornets”.
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On June 16, paleontologists published a scientific article describing a new fossil angel shark genus and species named Cretasquatina americana. Among those paleontologists is former University of Alabama curator of paleontology Dana Ehret. The team used two specimens from the paleontology collection of UA Museums’ Department of Museum Research and Collections.
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Fossil hermit crabs (Paguroidea) have long been known from the fossil record, primarily from claws. Over the last ten years, their millimeter-sized shields (particularly the anterior part) have been increasingly recognized.
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Methane seeps are places on the ocean floor where methane escapes from the subsurface into the water column. Such seeps, also called cold seeps, can be found at different depths in the oceans today and in the past. They are essentially the cold equivalent of hydrothermal vents.
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