Thank you for taking an interest in the Tetrapod Collection and what we do here. Just like the collection itself, our blog is always growing. Recently we’ve had many stories to tell and new, exciting topics to write about. Today I will announce a name change of the blog and give you some reasoning why we decided to do this.
You may be familiar with blogs of other natural history collections and their catchy names. Among our collections at the OSU Museum of Biological Diversity the insect collection has a very timely blog that is aptly named ”The Pinning Block.” A pinning block is a surface where preserved insects are pinned down, so having a blog named after something that the insect collection uses daily is a great way to attract interest.
So I have been thinking about what we do in the Tetrapod Collection and how we can put this into the blog’s name. It turned out to be a challenging exercise: The Tetrapod Collection holds about 4,800 amphibians, 2,300 reptiles, 17,000 birds, and 5,200 mammals; in addition to this we house many preserved bird eggs, nests and skeletons. Not to mention, many of the specimens have historical value due to them dating back to the late 1800’s. And if that weren’t enough, we also have preserved specimens from three extinct species of birds. Not to brag, but our collection is pretty impressive and deserves an awesome blog to go with it. But what is the unifying feature of this collection?
It really was not easy to come up with a good name for a blog about tetrapods. It turns out that we do not use a particular tool every day that can be used as a good name (like the insect collection’s pinning block). Also, we preserve vertebrates but not all of them. The museum has a separate fish collection and we thus do not want to call it a vertebrate collection blog as we do not include the largest group of vertebrates, the fishes. I came up with some suggestions of new blog names and had the collection staff vote on them. After much deliberation and careful consideration, a verdict was reached and the name was changed. So it gives me great pleasure to announce that from now on, the Tetrapods Collection’s blog will be called…
Fur, Feathers, Fangs, and Frogs
News and Musings from the OSU Tetrapod Collection
This is an improvement on the name that we already had by making it catchier and more alliterate:
Fur = Mammals
Feathers = Birds
Fangs = Reptiles
Frogs = Amphibians
Let us know what you think about the new name and share it with colleagues, friends, and family. Under our new and catchier name, we will continue to post about on goings and news in the collection.