AMNH Library Digital Repository
The AMNH Library Digital Repository is an archive maintained by the Research Library for AMNH Scientific Publications, AMNH scholarly output and other original and published materials digitized by the Library. All information in the repository is freely accessible to scholars around the world to support their research.
Communities
Select a community to browse its collections.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Division of Anthropology.
- Contains scientific data and other digitized material from the Department of Astrophysics.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Center of Biodiversity and Conservation.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Department of Herpetology.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Department of Mammalogy.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Department of Ornithology.
- Contains scientific data and/or field notes and other digitized material from the Division of Paleontology
- Contains digitized Museum publications, Annual Reports, and archives from the Research Library.
- Contains dissertations from the Richard Gilder Graduate School.
- Contains: American Museum Novitates, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, and Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as, related Supplemental Material.
Recent Submissions
Supplemental material for 'Ex vivo three-dimensional reconstruction of Acutiramus : a giant pterygotid sea scorpion (American Museum novitates, no. 4004)'
(American Museum of Natural History., 2023-11) Bicknell, Russell D. C.; Kenny, Katrina; Plotnick, Roy E.
Supplemental material for 'Ex vivo three-dimensional reconstruction of Acutiramus : a giant pterygotid sea scorpion (American Museum novitates, no. 4004)' - https://hdl.handle.net/2246/7335
Ex vivo three-dimensional reconstruction of Acutiramus : a giant pterygotid sea scorpion (American Museum novitates, no. 4004)
(American Museum of Natural History., 2023-11-20) Bicknell, Russell D. C.; Kenny, Katrina; Plotnick, Roy E.
Pterygotid eurypterids include some of the largest aquatic arthropods in the fossil record and are known from middle Silurian to Middle Devonian deposits across the globe. These forms primarily preserve as mostly two-dimensional impressions, a situation that has impacted the accurate reconstruction of pterygotid ventral structures and organization. By documenting specimens displaying important dorsal and ventral structures from both Acutiramus—a larger, well-documented pterygotid genus—and other pterygotids, we reconstruct Acutiramus in three-dimensions (3D) to more thoroughly understand the functional morphology and limb arrangement of these large eurypterids. With this comprehensive 3D reconstruction, we demonstrate a much more anterior insertion of appendages II–V, a near-horizontal orientation of appendages II–VI coxae, the presence of reduced appendage II, and a labrum and epistomel region. The labrum and epistomel sections are identified as the locality for cheliceral articulation. This model also uncovers the streamlined nature and low-profile morphology of Acutiramus. We use our model to explore the morphofunctionality of pterygotid eurypterids, including their feeding strategies, addressing a conundrum inherent in previous pterygotid reconstructions.
Glacial relicts? A new scorpion from Mount Olympus, Greece (Euscorpiidae: Euscorpius) (American Museum novitates, no. 4003)
(American Museum of Natural History., 2023-11-09) Blasco-Aróstegui, Javier.; Prendini, Lorenzo.
Mediterranean mountains and Pleistocene glacial cycles are responsible for much of the unique biodiversity of the Western Palearctic, acting respectively as refugia and drivers of diversification. Mount Olympus, a legendary Greek landmark, is a perfect example. This massif provided a glacial refugium for many species, resulting in a unique biota. In the present contribution, a new euscorpiid scorpion with a distinctive morphology, Euscorpius olympus, sp. nov., is described from an isolated population in the foothills of Mount Olympus. This new species raises the number of species in the genus Euscorpius Thorell, 1876, to 74, in Greece to 32, and in the vicinity of Mount Olympus, to three. The roles of climatic oscillations, altitudinal gradients and habitat heterogeneity on the diversity and distributions of the three species occurring around Mount Olympus are briefly discussed.
Supplemental material for 'Jormungandr walhallaensis : a new mosasaurine (Squamata: Mosasauroidea) from the Pierre Shale Formation (Pembina Member: Middle Campanian) of North Dakota (Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 464)'
(American Museum of Natural History., 2023-10-30) Zietlow, Amelia R.; Boyd, Clint A.; Van Vranken, Nathan E.
Supplemental material for 'Jormungandr walhallaensis : a new mosasaurine (Squamata: Mosasauroidea) from the Pierre Shale Formation (Pembina Member: Middle Campanian) of North Dakota (Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 464)' - https://hdl.handle.net/2246/7332
Jormungandr walhallaensis : a new mosasaurine (Squamata: Mosasauroidea) from the Pierre Shale Formation (Pembina Member: Middle Campanian) of North Dakota (Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 464)
(American Museum of Natural History., 2023-10-30) Zietlow, Amelia R.; Boyd, Clint A.; Van Vranken, Nathan E.
Mosasaurs are large, carnivorous aquatic lizards with a global distribution that lived during the Late Cretaceous. After 200 years of scientific study, new mosasaur species are still being discovered as new localities are explored and specimens collected long ago are reevaluated using modern standards of species delimitation. Even so, the phylogenetic positions of many key taxa are unresolved and therefore our understanding of mosasaur macroevolution is muddled. Here, we describe a new genus and species of mosasaurine mosasaur comprising a partial skull and skeleton from the Pembina Member of the Pierre Shale Formation in Cavalier County, North Dakota. The lower bound on the age of the specimen is 80.04 ±0.11 Ma, provided by the underlying bentonite bed. Its skull and jaws are nearly complete, and the postcranial skeleton preserves seven cervical vertebrae with three hypapophyseal peduncles, 11 ribs, and five anterior dorsal vertebrae. The new specimen was scored into a modified version of an existing phylogenetic matrix of Mosasauroidea and was recovered in a polytomy with Clidastes; however, given that its morphology is significantly different from that of Clidastes, we refer it to a new genus and species, Jormungandr walhallaensis. Notably, this new taxon shares a mosaic of features seen in both basal (e.g., Clidastes; high dental counts) and derived (e.g., Mosasaurus; subrectangular quadrate) mosasaurines, in addition to possessing its own unique suite of autapomorphies. Given that it possesses morphology intermediate between Clidastes and Plotosaurini, we suspect that future analyses of mosasaur phylogeny, following the addition of new characters and taxa, will recover Jormungandr as transitional between them. Its occurrence increases the known diversity of mosasaurs from the Pembina Member and is the earliest mosasaur to possess autapomorphies of Plotosaurini. Finally, we also analyzed the matrix using different outgroups to test their effect on tree topology and resolution, and found that including multiple nonmosasauroid anguimorphs increased resolution, but not support, of mosasaurid ingroup relationships.