Our Collections | Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Vertebrate Paleontology Collections Search Form

Here are some tips for searching our collections:

The data in the search results have not been verified completely. They should be viewed as a guide to the collections and they should not be used uncritically.

Specimen Acronym – After the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LACM) acquired the California Institute of Technology (CIT) Vertebrate Paleontology collections, the Caltech original specimen and locality catalogue numbers were retained. The specimen numbers from the two collections overlap and are distinguished by their respective institutional acronyms.

In most cases it is preferable to leave this search field blank so it will pick both options for you.

Taxon – Typically you will search for the name of a genus here. Using the name for a higher classification level here though will only retrieve those specimen records identified to that level. For example, a search for Canidae, will only return specimens identified as Canidae, and will NOT retrieve canid specimens identified as Epicyon, Vulpes, or Canis dirus.

Species – A search for a specific epithet without providing a generic epithet in the Taxon field above may return record results of quite unrelated taxa.

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Last updated on March 28, 2024, 4:50 am PDT