Welcome to the Biology Teaching Collection

The CSU Department of Biology maintains a large collection of specimens that we use in our classes. We have well over 13,000 specimens, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, representatives of most invertebrate groups, and plants of all kinds.

Students explore the diversity, evolutionary trends, and physical features of organismal groups with these materials in classes such as Invertebrate Biology (BZ 212), Vertebrate Biology (BZ 214), Plant Systematics (BZ 325), Herpetology (BZ 329), Mammalogy (BZ 330), and Ornithology (BZ 335). To learn about the diversity of life, there is no substitute for hands-on exploration of these materials!

Specimens have been added to the collection in many ways. Historically, the specimens in our collection reflect the research interests and activities of faculty and graduate students as they traveled to different parts of the world to obtain samples and data that were important to a scientific question.

Recently, we obtain specimens through: 1) donation of salvaged animals (window strike birds, cat killed squirrels, roadkill mountain lion, etc.), 2) our relationship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Property Repository, which holds animal parts brought into the country illegally (contraband), and 3) by purchasing sophisticated “bone clones,” replicas of skulls and bones of groups that are missing from our collection.

This collection has been an integral part of instruction in the Department of Biology for almost a century and we are currently reorganizing the collection, improving our curation of these valuable specimens, and digitizing the data in the collection, all with the help of dedicated and enthusiastic undergraduate volunteers. These volunteers learn valuable skills in curation, data management, taxonomic identification, and the history of science.

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