300 Primary types in the Stanford paleontological type collection

Primary types in the Stanford paleontological type collection - BAP #300

The Stanford University Paleontological Type Collection is part of an important national, as well as West Coast, resource of Holocene and fossil, primarily invertebrate, specimens that are housed with an extensive library of systematic publications in the Department of Geology, Stanford University, Stanford, California.¹ The University acquired its first general collections between 1892 and 1895 at the instigation of James Perrin Smith, Assistant Professor of Mineralogy and Paleontology. Although the nearby California Academy of Sciences collections were severely damaged in the earthquake and fire of 1906, the Stanford collections remained unharmed and intact. Acquisitions increased steadily, and by the mid 1920's the collection included large suites of irreplaceable material from localities no longer accessible, such as many drawers of Pleistocene specimens collected from Deadman Island, off San Pedro, California, before it was destroyed in the mid 1900's. Several drawers of Paris Basin material was received from A. E. M. Cossmann in exchange for California specimens collected by Delos Arnold. Large population samples, primarily from the California Coast Ranges and Transverse Ranges, were contributed by Stanford Summer Geology classes from the late 1890's to the present.