Collection of the Sector of Evolutionary Morphology

The structure of the evolutionary morphology collection is quite peculiar. Historically, the Sector has been accumulating morphological materials on vertebrates, which were primarily wet preparations and skeletons.

There are about 13,000 storage units kept in the Sector. Representation of the major vertebrate groups in collection is uneven. Most of them are mammals (6,400 skeletons and 880 wet preparations). The next largest group is birds (4425 skeletons, 369 wet preparations, and 856 fixed embryos). A small part of the collection is wet preparations of reptiles (185) and amphibians (75). There are also 69 dry micro-preparations stored separately.

Wet preparations are the whole animals or their parts, they are stored in containers with alcohol or formalin. This part of collection contains both special anatomical preparations and fully recorded animals.

Osteological preparations of mammals are represented by postcranial skeletons, whereas their skulls are stored in the Sector of Mammalogy. Total skeletons of birds are stored in this Sector. There is also a small collection of micro-preparations on slides representing histological materials of different nature.

The Sector completes Acquisition and Inventory Books separately for bird skeletons, micro-preparations, wet preparations of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Information on each specimen is fixed on its label and is duplicated in the electronic database.