Structure of collection of the Division of Evolutionary Morphology is pretty peculiar. It happened historically that the Division has been accumulating materials on vertebrates that were and are of comparative anatomical significance. These are primarily skeletons and total or partial preparations preserved in a fluid.

Curator in Charge
Dr. Andrey A. Lissovsky.
e-mail:andlis@zmmu.msu.ru

Admission to collections
A preliminary agreement with curator and a recommendation letter of respective institution are required to get permission to work with the collections. The contact phone is 629-39-43.

Preparations and Storage
The basic forms of preparations are specimens in a fluid and skeletons. The former are total animals or parts thereof kept in a vessel with a preservative (usually, alcohol or formalin). For the mammals, osteological materials are represented by postcranial parts only, the skulls and skins being kept in the Division of Mammalogy; for the birds and reptiles, the entire skeletons are kept in this Division. Besides, there is a small collection of micropreparations on the object-plates.

Collection documentation.
Primary registration and inventory books, as well as catalogues, are kept separately for various forms of preparations. Each specimens has a museum label with detailed information which is duplicated onto respective catalogue card.

Composition of collections
The total number of specimens kept in the Division is equal to 12.000. Most of them are mammals (about 8.000 skeletons and 738 fluid preparations). There are 1845 skeletons and 369 fluid preparations of birds, while number of reptiles is even smaller, 184 and 75, respectively. There are 69 micropreparations on the object-plates.