Facilities of the Department of Geological Sciences, the Department of Biology, the Museum of Zoology , and the Museum of Anthropology are also utilized by the faculty, staff, and students of the Museum of Paleontology. Collections Museum of Paleontology collections are unique in preserving one of the largest samples of middle Devonian and early Mississippian invertebrates in the country. Extensive Plio-Pleistocene mammal, reptile, bird, and fish collections are also housed in the museum. There are extensive collections of fossil plants from the Devonian of New York, the early Mississippian of Indiana, Kentucky, and Virginia, the Cretaceous of Virginia, New Mexico, and Alaska, the Pennsylvanian of Michigan and Alabama, and the Tertiary of the western United States, and the Miocene of Ecuador. Fossil mammal collections are completely cataloged in an electronic data base, as is the type collection of invertebrates.
Work continues on the remaining collections.
Since its inception, the Museum of Paleontology has been a center of research activity. Early studies concentrated on systematics and evolutionary history of fossil groups represented in museum collections. These empirical studies continue, along with more wide-ranging studies of the processes of evolution, taphonomic investigation, and morphometric analyses of fossil material. Field projects by faculty and staff are carried out in such diverse areas as Michigan, the Rocky Mountain west, Egypt, Pakistan, Ecuador, and Kazakhstan. Both undergraduate and graduate courses are taught.