Inside Museums: How Field Collections, DNA Sequencing, and AI Map Earth’s Biodiversity

Overview

This feature surveys how world class institutions like the Field Museum, La Brea Tar Pits, and the Smithsonian preserve life’s diversity, from wet collections of preserved specimens to fossil excavations in tar and ice age sites. It highlights modern techniques such as DNA sampling, tissue analysis, three dimensional imaging, and environmental DNA to unlock past and present biodiversity. It also examines the challenges of funding, private collections, and the race to build digital archives that support science and conservation worldwide.

What you will learn

You will see how DNA extraction from fresh and preserved tissue works, how fossils are recovered and prepared, the role of eDNA in monitoring ecosystems, and how AI and robotics accelerate research. The piece connects museum science to real world issues like invasive species, extinction risk, and climate change, showing how archives today become the tools for tomorrow’s discoveries.

Section 1: The Hidden World of Major Museum Collections

The video opens with a tour of expansive wet collections beneath the Field Museum, likening jars of preserved life to a living library. It explains that museums and labs contribute tens of billions to the economy and drive scientific discovery, while highlighting the fragility of operations during government shutdowns. The Field Museum acquires specimens through donations or field collection, and researchers like Sarah extract DNA from fresh tissue to link genetic data with physical form. The process shows the careful handling required to avoid contamination, the preference for liver tissue due to its DNA yield, and the use of formalin and long term alcohol preservation to maintain specimens for decades. The segment emphasizes how researchers must anticipate current and future data needs, such as sex or other metadata, and the importance of reversible preservation methods so that tissues remain usable for later analyses.

Section 2: Techniques in Preservation and Visualization

The narrative delves into the practicalities of preserving specimens, from tucking snakes under formalin soaked towels to prevent desiccation, to preserving larger animals like catfish in formalin followed by ethanol baths for long term storage. It explains how clearing and staining techniques render bones and cartilage visible inside preserved organisms, enabling researchers to study fine skeletal structures. The process uses blue dye for cartilage and red dye for calcium, followed by enzymatic clearing with trypsin to render tissues transparent while preserving connective scaffolding. The resulting cleared specimens can reveal hidden anatomical differences that may define new species. This section highlights how these methods can turn ordinary jars into extraordinary sources of morphological and evolutionary information.

Section 3: The La Brea Tar Pits: Excavation, Preservation, and Discovery

Laura at La Brea shares the painstaking excavation of fossils from asphalt, a substance that paradoxically preserves organic matter deeply. The tar pits are a time capsule spanning tens of thousands of years, providing a rare time transgressive record across a 40 000 year window. Excavators deploy a grid system to map fossil positions, carefully remove matrix using civil engineering tools and selected degreasers, and protect fragile bone surfaces. When fossils break, adhesives and Kozo paper are used to stabilize fragments for future study. The collection includes millions of specimens from the last 50 000 years, with tens of thousands of saber toothed cat bones stored in dedicated drawers. The tar pits, while challenging to extract from, uniquely illuminate extinction dynamics and behaviors of Ice Age fauna.

Section 4: The Smithsonian and the Digital Noah’s Ark

Transitioning to the Smithsonian, the video reveals a massive, offsite complex with 1.4 million square feet of collections and 148 million specimens. It explains three primary acquisition channels: donations, expeditions, and occasional purchases funded by private backers. The focus shifts to digitization, with a seven year project to digitize the entire US herbarium and a plan to migrate to entomology and broader taxa. Advanced imaging, 3D scanning, and AI are accelerating digitization, reducing the time needed to process specimens from months to days. The Earth Biogenome Project is introduced as a global effort to sequence the genomes of Earth’s known species, a project that has the potential to transform medicine, agriculture, and biodiversity science. The LAB for DNA sequencing is highlighted as the nerve center for genetic analysis and the gateway to building a truly digital, searchable molecular archive of natural life.

Section 5: Forensics, Invasive Species, and Ethical Boundaries

The Smithsonian’s forensics branch demonstrates how DNA phenotyping might predict facial features from genetic data, a field fraught with limitations and ethical concerns. The video emphasizes that DNA is a blueprint with probabilistic outcomes and that environment shapes appearance. The module also highlights eDNA as a powerful, scalable tool for monitoring ecosystems and identifying potential invasive species long before they cause widespread damage. The ARMS system and environmental DNA analyses are shown to be deployed in ecosystems around the world, enabling rapid biodiversity assessments and informing conservation strategies.

Section 6: Markets, Mysteries, and the Value of Physical Evidence

A separate thread follows the booming market for rare crystals and minerals, with the Smithsonian acquiring a 8 000 pound Arkansas quartz crystal through a long negotiation. The piece discusses the tension between private collecting and public access, noting that government funding limits the museum's ability to acquire through purchase, making philanthropy essential to preserving extraordinary specimens. The narrative explores the tension between market demand and scientific value, showing how private donors can help expand public access to unique objects that illuminate earth history.

Section 7: Debunking Myths and Pushing Frontiers

The segments on Sue the T rex reveal how soft tissue and vascular channels can be identified in dinosaur bones using destructive analysis when justified by the potential insight. The team uses cutting edge techniques such as Raman spectroscopy to characterize organics in fossils, enabling the detection of metabolic markers associated with warm bloodedness and challenging the traditional view that nonavian dinosaurs were cold blooded. The data suggest high metabolic rates in many dinosaurs and modern interpretations of dinosaur physiology are evolving with accumulating evidence.

Section 8: The Human Element and Future Prospects

Across the narratives, the human element remains central: researchers balancing risk, ethics, and curiosity; technicians who 3D scan, photograph, and catalog vast numbers of specimens; field scientists who gather data in extreme environments using drones and portable sensors; and librarians who preserve context and provenance for generations to come. The overarching message is that the preservation of life on Earth depends on robust, well funded institutions that combine traditional collection practices with digital transformation. The final takeaway is a call to protect and invest in collections because they are the foundation for discovering how life has evolved and how it will adapt to future global changes.