Journal Article

  • Eggs is eggs: A case study in destructive sampling and analysis of museum natural history specimens
    Stewart, J. R. M., Gladstone, I. S., Collins, M. J.
    Journal of Natural Science Collections, Volume 2, pages 4 - 12

    Where destructive sampling of museum natural history collections is proposed, the needs of current research must be balanced against preservation for future use of a finite resource. This paper presents a case study of an interaction between researchers at the University of York and curators at York Museums Trust (YMT) regarding a request by the former for destructive sampling from YMT's historic bird egg collection. We draw attention to reasons for success and share an approach to managing a destructive sampling request in a regional museum useful to both researchers (in preparing requests) and curators (in assessing and acting upon these).

    Keywords: Birds; Museum egg collections; Biomolecular archaeology; Destructive sampling