Laboratory of Quaternary Paleontology (LQP) Collection

Specimens in this collection represent the largest collection of modern and fossil vertebrate and invertebrate remains from the Colorado Plateau and greater Southwest region.

The LQP houses two collections. One is a primary National Park Service repository of 15,000 specimens from National Parks in the Southwest (Arches, Black Canyon, Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Colorado, Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Natural Bridges, Oregon Caves, Pipe Springs, Wind Cave, and Zion). The other is the Quaternary Sciences Program comparative collection, a combination of 16,000 modern and fossil specimens of mammal skeletons, gastropods, bivalves, amphibians, and reptiles. The LQP also houses what may be the world’s most complete collection—and certainly one of the very few existing—of the stomach contents (fossil dung) of extinct Pleistocene megafauna. This collection is the basis for one of the lab’s current projects, an atlas of fossil and modern dung, being compiled by Dr. Jim I. Mead and Sandra Swift. The collection of lizards is one of the largest and most complete in North America; the mollusk collection is one of the best and most comprehensive in the Southwest; and the collection of terrestrial gastropods is also one of the most complete in the Southwest.

The database for this collection contains photos of many specimens, detailed specimen descriptions, elevation information, geologic age, and other information. When searching BECBase, NAU's collections database, this collection is called NAU QSP.