Fifty-eight thousand Bailey-Matthews shell collection. That’s the magic figure for the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.
Museum volunteers in the last week crossed the barrier of recording and cataloging 58,000 lots of shells, or roughly 275,000 individual shells collected or donated to the museum in the last 20 years. It represents thousands of species of the critters and creatures occupying shells. Some date to the 1800s.
The museum got serious about tracking its huge collection in the last few years, funding two staffers and attracting another two dozen or so volunteers. The figure represents less than half of the shells donated to the Sanibel museum, which this year has added the word “national” to its name. The figure also includes 3,000 wet specimens stored in grain alcohol for DNA research, and a treasure trove donated from the Redfern collection, shells mostly gathered from the Bahamas. Colin Redfern is a rock star in shelling, a noted guidebook author on shelling. His collection dates to the early 1970s. It is considered a coup in the world of malacology, the term zoologists use for the study of mollusks.
– See more Bailey-Matthews shell collection at: http://www.captivasanibel.com/page/content.detail/id/524201/Bailey-Matthews-shell-collection-crosses-into-new-territory.html?nav=5051#sthash.NtEEp4TL.dpuf
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