A Memorandum of Understanding has been established between the National Museums of Kenya and the Finnish Museum of Natural History (Luomus). This co-operation between the institutions has enabled a project of entering fossil specimen data into a collection management system. When ready, the system will make valuable data accessible for researchers and the public worldwide.
The first phase in this joint partnership is to transcribe handwritten accession card data of thousands of fossil specimens into a digital format. Transcribing this information is too large a task for the limited number of museum personnel. Therefore help is needed transcribing the data into digital format and an online searchable database for researchers, students and the public.
The two parties have set an on-line transcription project, "Cradle of Mankind", using Zooniverse, the world's largest and most popular platform for people-powered research, with up to a million volunteers. In this project, people are asked to enter the data written on the accession cards. If you are interested in participating in the project, please register yourself at Zooniverse and after signing in, head to Cradle of Mankind.
Why is this important?
The information these cards contain can help to answer the fundamental questions of human and mammalian evolution, and in reconstructing the environment and climate of the past, says Kari Lintulaakso, collection coordinator at the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus. As Dr Job Kibii, head of the Palaeontology Section at the National Museums of Kenya, summarises: "Every bone has a story to tell, a tale about an individual, a time and a place millions of years old."
