By Erin Wrinkel
Baby armadillos float motionless in jars of greenish fluid.
Nearby lie the broken bones of almost every imaginable animal.
In another room, eyeless bats lay interred in a pull-out drawer.
No, this isn’t Frankenstein’s laboratory. It’s the fossil collection tucked away on the second floor of Bolin.
Most students, however, don’t know about this chamber of horrors maintained by the biology department since the 1950s.
And it’s not just any fossil collections either – it’s one of the largest collections in Texas. It’s also one of the largest in the country.
This prehistoric collection will be leaving MSU by way of the University of Texas this summer. Along with the collection, MSU will be giving up decades of student data from the collection.
“It may seem strange to you to be giving a valuable fossil collection to the University of Texas, but I assure you it is the right thing to do,” said President Dr. Jesse Rogers at a Board of Regents meeting this semester.
Walter Dalquest, a former MSU biology professor, started the collection.
He served at MSU for more than 50 years and wrote several hundred publications in his field. Dalquest died in 2000.
Dalquest’s former graduate student, Dr. Frederick Stangl, worked alongside him. Stangl also added to the litany of fossils.
Stangl continued his research with Dalquest when he became a professor of biology at MSU in 1984.
“We did a lot of stuff together. He was a really neat guy,” Stangl said.
Stangl oversees the collection now.
For years he has been maintaining, protecting and acquiring new fossils.
But there’s a problem: Stangl will retire this year, leaving no one in charge of maintaining the collection.
This, Rogers said, is one of the main factors in moving the fossils to UT.
Stangl said his biggest concern about leaving MSU is making sure the collections are properly taken care of so they can last a long time.
Field zoology students have added to the collection as well.
The students in the class found the artifacts and documented their works.
Stangl said these documents will be given to UT along with the fossil collection.
“The collection belongs to the state, so they were never just for Midwestern, they were for research,” Stangl said.
Even though the fossils won’t be on campus, Midwestern will continue to receive credit for its findings.
Stangl and other researchers will be allowed to view the collection for future research findings.
This is not the first time MSU has lost the collection to other universities.
In 2007, Texas Tech received some of the collection and has the opportunity to receive more.
With the fossils, researchers use the collection to look at DNA and determine traits about various species.
The fossils have also been the source of several publications, some written by former students.
Stangl said he will miss doing what he loves at MSU and will continue to enjoy his love for animals by doing research in the mammal collection still located at MSU.
A teaching collection will remain on campus for biology classes.