The SDSU Biodiversity Museum Mammalogy Collection contains over 3,000 specimens, the oldest dating to the 1800s. Material in the collection includes mostly skins and skeletons, with a limited number of alcohol specimens.
Our collection is focused on southern California, but with many years of donations from the San Diego Zoo and modest field collections from Africa, Asia, and Australia, and of marine mammals, we have a relatively good synoptic representation of most major taxa. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. David Archibald and Dr. Annalisa Berta, SDSU Emeritus faculty members who mostly built the mammal collections at SDSU.
While specimens can be loaned to other institutions, the central thrust of our collection is for use in teaching, permitting hundreds of students each year to have access to mammal specimens. The collection is also an essential comparative basis for graduate student and faculty research.
For further information about the Mammalogy collection, please contact Professor Eric Ekdale.
