Preserving the collection means saving a record that can help researchers uncover stories about the planet’s past, and its potential future.

It was a monumental undertaking, but worth it, said Joseph Stoner, co-director of the repository at OSU. Stanley, one of the Antarctic core curators at OSU, helped spearhead the effort to ship the cores almost 3,000 miles across country. Four years ago, however, faced with numerous staff retirements and limited lab space, administrators decided the cores needed to be relocated.īut handing off this muddy baton was no small feat. They form a set called the Antarctic Core Collection, which FSU oversaw for more than 50 years. Many of these cores, now housed at OSU in Corvallis, Oregon, were dredged up from the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean by researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Inside the cracked dirt of the sediment core were microscopic bits of shells, rocks and fossils, all clues to how the ocean looked millennia ago. It was filled a cylinder, more than a foot long, of light-brown mud: layers of sediment collected from the ocean floor.

Stanley paused for a moment, chose a plastic tube with an orange lid and held it out so I could look through the clear siding. Shelves 20 feet high towered overhead, loaded with tubes and boxes. Inside a large storage room at Oregon State University, Valerie Stanley opened the door to a massive refrigerated area, releasing a blast of cold air.

Shipping containers construction osu