PEGGY FISHERKELLER
Curator of Geology
Collection highlights
The Geology and Paleontology collections of the Indiana Sate Museum interpret the general history of life and environments in Indiana.
Invertebrate Paleontology and Paleobotany. The intent is to document the history of invertebrate and plant life in Indiana and 
surrounding regions throughout the preserved fossil record. The collection, consisting of some 17,000 specimens, includes materials from such classic Indiana localities as Waldron (Silurian), the Falls of the Ohio River (Devonian) and Crawfordsville (Mississippian). The latter collection includes a superb array of professionally prepared crinoids from a couple of the Crawfordsville localities. Specimens are filed both systematically as reference to facilitate identification and stratigraphically to track the completeness of the collected record. The collection includes several primary type and early figured specimens. The paleobotany collection consists of 1500 specimens, primarily from the Pennsylvanian rocks of Indiana.
Mineralogy. The intent is to document the suites of minerals that occur in Indiana. Quality samples of minerals from near-by states and countries are also curated to show regional diversity, particularly within the mineral calcite. The collection is composed of 3,000 predominantly Indiana specimens, particularly well furnished in calcite, many from now-inaccessible localities. Specimens are acquired mainly by field collection and by donation.
Petrology. A primary focus of the collection, consisting of 700 specimens, is to support the paleontological collections in documenting the ancient environments of Indiana. A goal is to develop a complete stratigraphic collection of rocks and sedimentary structures known from Indiana.