Anne Karin Hufthammer
Associate Professor
Bergen Museum
Dept. of Zoology
University of Bergen
Bergen Hordaland
N-5007 Bergen Norway
Email: Anne.Hufthammer@zmb.uib.no

Associate professor Anne Karin Hufthammer is head of the department of osteology at the Natural History Museum, University of Bergen. The osteology department maintains 3 large scientific skeletal collections: a collection of about 12700 contemporary skeletons of fishes, birds and mammals, a national collection of fossil bones from archaeological and geological excavations and a collection of Human deciduous teeth from 13 countries. Hufthammer's research is focused on Quaternary vertebrate faunal history, in particular concerning the fauna of the last ice age and of early postglacial age, the correlation of climate, vertebrate fauna and vegetation under arctic conditions, the history of animal domestication in Norway and morphological variation of vertebrates in relation to chronology and distribution. Museum collections have gained importance in recent years, due to both the introduction of new molecular techniques (e.g. DNA) and to the awareness of the rapid extermination of species. Scientific zoological collections are rarely on display and available to the public, but at the Natural history museum a collection of 24 skeletons and crania of whales are displayed. This is probably the largest displayed collection of whale skeletons in the world, but it has been somewhat neglected and forgotten by the scientific community for many years. With the aid of private and university funds, Hufthammer is working on an upgrade of the collection to modern standards and publishing the collection on the Internet to make this unique collection accessible to international scientists, students and the general public.

Anne Karin will present A Whale of a Web-site