PART 2: EXPECTED IMPACTS RESULTING FROM THE ELIMINATION OF THE UNIVERSITY'S VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY PROGRAM

• Vertebrate paleontology (nine courses, including all vertebrate paleontology graduate and undergraduate courses) will be eliminated from the curriculum at UNL.
  
  
• Advanced degrees in vertebrate paleontology will no longer be offered.
  
  
• Undergraduates and graduates with an interest in vertebrate paleontology will pursue their education elsewhere, and the opportunity to attract undergraduates to the field will be abdicated.
  
  
• The pool of young paleontologists trained in the geological context that supports the North American mid-continent Cenozoic mammalian record will be significantly reduced. Familiarity with the geologic setting for the defining Chadronian, Orellan, Whitneyan, Arikareean, and Hemingfordian ages, and the faunas of Barstovian, Clarendonian, and Hemphillian age in the northern High Plains, will be greatly diminished.
  
  
• A 120-year history of paleontology field investigations by UNSM in Nebraska will cease.
  
  
• The Highway Salvage Program may continue, but its ability to conduct large-scale projects or to provide programs to the public will be lost.
  
  
• State residents seeking information on paleontology, requesting identification of fossil material, or wishing to report a fossil locality will be referred to out-of-state professionals.
  
  
• Nebraska children will be unlikely to meet a professional paleontologist, take a "behind-the-scene" tour of a paleontology laboratory or collection area, or to learn about the state's important role in the field of vertebrate paleontology.
  
  
• Interested adults and students will lose the opportunity to volunteer in a paleontology laboratory, or to participate in field courses and excavations.
  
  
• New "Ashfalls" or "Agates" are unlikely to be developed in the state.
  
  
• As with all orphaned collections, one may expect this unattended or under-attended collection to gradually suffer physical degradation. Specimens will be "lost"; type specimens and extremely valuable material may especially be at risk. Field records and other data may become disassociated from their parent specimens. The enormous scientific value of this collection will gradually diminish. The slow (or rapid) demise of this collection, critical to mammalian paleontology, will be felt worldwide.
  
  
• A valuable library in the paleontology division, as well as archival material, will also be orphaned and may be lost or deaccessioned.
  
  
• Visiting researchers may have access to the collection. If so, their investigations may be less productive, and surely the level of professional assistance and/or collaboration will be minimal if not entirely lacking.
  
  
• Even if a research division were re-established in the future, the loss of an "institutional memory" will present difficulties to a new staff. Re-establishing a relationship of trust with potential donors, landowners, other paleontological programs and institutions, and state and federal agencies will be complicated by a perception of past irresponsibility.
  
  
• Updating and additions to existing exhibits (at sites across the state as well as at Morrill Hall) will depend upon outside contractors: the added expense may limit such renovations. Without professional oversight, exhibited specimens will suffer physical deterioration over time. Exhibits may fail to reflect current scientific perspectives.
  
  
• Accreditation of what remains of the Museum (an exhibit hall and a department of public programs) may be imperiled, and affect the success of grant proposals.
  
  
• The Museum's informal science education programs will feel the lack of a vertebrate paleontology staff.
  
  
• The absence of an academic paleontology program in the state may provide an increased opportunity for fossil poaching and theft from public and private lands. Advocates for preserving the nation's fossil resources will miss the support of their Nebraska colleagues.