Page Contents: Section | Significance | Background | Location & Dates | Taxonomic Contents | Documentation | Description of Collection | Collection Inventory | Collection Assets
Meals, Harold S.
Section Responsible for Processing
Invertebrate Paleontology
Significance
Harold S. Meals was the founder of the Southern California Paleontological Society. Most of the collection is from localities that were visited by the excursions of the Southern California Paleontological Society during the last half century. Many of these sites are no longer accessible for fossil collecting, so a collection of this scope cannot be replicated today.
Background
Meals collected the specimens during Southern California Paleontological Society (SCPS) field trips throughout California and the surrounding region. The locality data for these SCPS sites were published by the society in 1990 as Special Publication Number 7, Fossil Localities of the Southern California Paleontological Society. Collections were made most likely between the 1960s to the 1990s.
A PDF of the above publication will be available for download below.
Harold Meals was a contemporary of June Maxwell, Homer White, and Bertram Draper and may have collected with some of them.
Collection Location and Dates
Most of the collection is from localities that were visited by the excursions of the Southern California Paleontological Society during the past half century.
Taxonomic Contents
The collection contains an estimated 20,000 specimens of fossil invertebrates from numerous cataloged Southern California Paleontological Society fossil localities throughout the southwestern United States.
Documentation
Accession number F.A.3817.2001-1, 26 October 2001. Meals’ field note books were very comprehensive and included sketch maps. These have been scanned and are attached to the locality records in the Invertebrate Paleontology database.
Description of Collection
Approximately 17 Lane cabinets of fossils in the west wing of the South Grand facility.
Collection Inventory
The majority of the estimated 20,000 specimens have been unpacked, placed into archival-grade museum storage trays and stored in Lane cabinets for further cataloging and curation. Some of the specimen lots have been identified to species level, but many remain unidentified.
Collection Assets
No collection assets available.