Research
Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory: Mission
The mission of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory is three-fold, involving research, conservation, and education pertaining to the history of vertebrates. In particular, VPL focuses on the history of vertebrates in Texas and adjacent regions, but much broader studies are also conducted to establish a national and global context for Texas vertebrate history.
Research
The Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory has become a national center of excellence for the study of the history of prehistoric life. With cataloged holdings of more than 250,000 specimens (and perhaps three times that many collected), it ranks among the seven largest collections of fossil vertebrates in North America. The collections and support-staff facilitate research by UT faculty, staff, graduate students and roughly a dozen VPL Research Associates. In addition, the Lab loans specimens to outside researchers and routinely hosts visiting researchers and graduate students from around the world. Hundreds of scholarly research publications have been generated from the study of VPL specimens. The VPL has also been instrumental in developing new technologies like high-resolution CT scanning.
A high-resolution CT slice through the snout of the American alligator, which was part of a dataset constituting the first digital publication of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Conservation
The Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory is by far the largest repository of fossil vertebrates in Texas. Its collections document and preserve scientific work conducted in Texas over more than a century of scholarship. In addition to the collections made by its own staff and students, VPL has taken on a number of orphaned collections made elsewhere in the State, including the Third Geological Survey of Texas, the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, Texas A&M University, The University of Texas at El Paso, East Texas State University, and Midwestern State University. It maintains special collections made from Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe National Monument, various Texas parks, the Navajo Nation, and others. In many cases, VPL staff have rehabilitated and re-curated the older collections, making them available once again to researchers and educators.
Education
VPL is a center for graduate education and provides office space for five graduate students in residence. Over its 51-year history, VPL has supported 68 Masters theses and Doctoral dissertations by UT students, and it has provided resources to many other graduate students. It is currently one of the two largest graduate training programs in the US. VPL plays an important role in undergraduate education by providing specimens to laboratory courses in several departments on campus. At present, between 1000 and 2000 undergraduates are trained each year using VPL specimens. VPL also plays a highly visible role in public education and outreach. VPL has loaned numerous specimens and helped to develop exhibits at the Texas Memorial Museum, the Austin Science and Nature Center, The Grace Museum in Abilene, the Roberts County Museum in Miami, the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the Houston Museum of Natural History, the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon, the Visitor’s Center at Big Bend National Park, and other organizations in Texas. VPL staff routinely answer questions about fossils via television, radio, and other news media. Lab staff also responds to public inquiries on fossils, chance finds of fossils, and fossil identification requests. All VPL staff members and resident graduate students are active in giving public lectures to elementary schools, high schools, and other organizations.
