This skull of a kasagea, a type of freshwater seal, was collected on a Carnegie expedition to the Arctic in the 1930s.
When this skull was collected by Arthur Twomey, assistant curator of Ornithology, and J. K. Doutt, curator of Mammalogy, in 1938, kasagea seals were rumored to be a new species. Doutt however discovered that the kasagea was actually a subspecies of another kind of seal.
More than 50 years later, information that Doutt gathered on kasagea was used to discourage potentially harmful hydroelectric developments in northern Quebec in the 1990s, proving that even many years after discovery natural history collections can be of great value in conservation efforts.
(photo by Hayley Pontia)