Mounted mammal heads

Specimens from the original US Biological Survey made up the original set of specimens for the mammal collection. With Davis as the Department Head and Chief Curator, the collection quickly grew to include specimens from his many field trips to Mexico.

Currently, the mammal collection houses approximately 59,000 specimens of mammals. Geographically, the collection focuses on material from the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Central America. The majority of these specimens consist of skins and skeletal material prepared by standard museum procedures. Most of these specimens are represented as skins with skulls or as skeletons only; however, approximately 15 years ago, researchers affiliated with this collection began preparing many of their specimens as skins with skulls plus post-cranial material.

Mammal pelts in drawer

The TCWC mammal division also contains 284 pelts, 12,000 whole specimens preserved in alcohol, and 1,410 phalli or bacula. Twenty of the 26 currently recognized Orders of mammals and the all of the 13 Orders considered to occur in North America are represented in this collection. The largest holdings (>40% each) are for the Orders Rodentia and Chiroptera. The TCWC contains specimens of 865 different species, from 290 genera, and 82 families. This division holds 39 holotypes (8 species, 31 subspecies) and 556 paratypes from 40 taxa. Most material was collected within the last 55 years but some specimens date back to the early 1900s. The TCWC mammal division contains representatives of 20 species listed as "Endangered" and seven species listed as "Threatened" by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Representatives of 28 of the 47 species considered to be "Of Interest" by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are maintained in this collection.

The collection of mammals continues to grow through recent agreements with the National Parks System, which designates the TCWC as the official repository for vertebrate specimens from Big Thicket National Preserve, Padre Island National Seashore, and San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. Specimen records from the collection may be accessed via the MaNIS site. Our loan policy is available here.

The TCWC's Mammal Division is willing and able to care for all types of collections. If you collect specimens as part of your research and cannot or do not wish to adequately care for them in the long term, please consider the TCWC as a repository. The TCWC gratefully accepts the deposit of such specimens provided they are accompanied by proper documentation and permits (USDA, USFWS, CITES, STATE).