Article: The Physical Basis of Palaeontological Curating

The physical tasks related to specimen or collection preparation are often neglected and/or not fully appreciated by many curators or by fund-giving bodies. Three categories of storage are described, and the manner in which they are established, evolve, and, hopefully, improve are discussed. The relationships of such storage to display and to a manual catalogue are outlined. It is maintained that the physical tasks of cleaning, preparing, researching, and arranging specimens naturally precedes any good cataloguing system