I found a dead baby sea turtle on the beach this morning and want to preserve it in its' entire state. I would like a dry dead turtle. How do I do this and what do I need? Right now it is in a bucket of salt water. Can someone please walk me through the necessary steps to achieve this. Thank-you very much
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Claudia,
I don't want to be a party pooper, but are you sure you don't have a protected species? Most species that I'm familiar with are. If you do, it can get VERY expensive if it is found in your possession without proper federal and state permits. I'm not much on turtles as I send them out. The other guys will have to help you on that one.
When you find out if it is legal to have then you can worry about how th preserve
it. If you just want to preserve it, keep it in a glass jar with denatured alcohol.
Like George, I don't mess with them either. If it is not a legal sepcies, call your
local high school, the biology department will probably make good use of it.
First off - As George says, it is most likely illegal to own any species of Sea Turtle without proper permits. Museums usually have permits so depending which coast you are on, contact a Herpetology Department at a University Museum or Free standing Museum to make use of it. However, first freeze the turtle in a plastic bag.
Preparation of the specimen as a "dry specimen" (as opposed to a fluid specimen in alcohol after preservation in formalin), is
best done by some adaptation of the Noble/Jaeckle Parafin infiltration system published at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926. This technique uses a series of increasingly higher concentrations of ethanol until it reaches 100%, followed by slowly working up to a xylene series and then infiltration of a parafin type material- like permaplast used in Histology. This is not unlike tissue preparation in a hospital. Freeze drying is a second option but it would most likely distort during lypholization.
Straight classic taxidermy on a hatchling or juvenile sea turtle is not a good method for preparation. I will admit that they are simply the cutest litrtle creatures. In 1982 our Museum recieved an NSF Grant which sent two of my co-workers to Costa Rica to bring back a couple hundred sea turtle eggs. We incubated them at temperatures ranging from 22 degrees to 30 degrees centigrade in order to test sex determination. It seems that many turtles develope as a different sex depending which temperature they are incubated at i.e. at 22 degrees all the turtle became male, at 30 degrees female, and in between about 50-50. This median temperature becomes very important to determine when one considers that there are numerous turtle hatcheries trying to bring many threatened turtles back from being on the endangered list, and the hatcheries might have been releasing only one sex. It was my job to go down each morning and extract these cute cuddly newly hatched baby sea turtles and introduce them to the Museum environment of a Scientific collection.
Sorry for all this extra stuff but I like out to liven up this forum and hopefully entertain readers.
Put the baby turtle to a good resting place at a museum.
Steve,
Great posting. I almost got to the Histology, but the permaplast did me in. That made me hit the books and I was amazed that there really ARE folks like you out there doing that. What's scary is that you're reading THIS forum. We have people who don't know there's a difference in "your" and "you're". I can hardly wait till Leanna sees THIS one.
PS: Thanks for doing a thankless job that hopefully makes this old blue/green ball a better place for all of us. Keep up the good work.
...to just say, "I know bigger words than YOU do"! I cant help thinking we are getting our legs pulled again, but it WAS a cool posting.
Steve your post was quite interesting AND entertaining to say the least. I love reading stuff like that, although I must add the hazards of using such aromatic chemicals as xylene. Us taxidermists can barely stay healthy using bondo and super glue let alone xylene, due to the fact that only a medium concentration of the particular chemical mentioned causes nausea, irritation of the mucous membranes, vertiginousness, incoordination and the basic impairment of ones poise or rather equilibrium. Now when we speak of HIGH concentrations of the aforementioned chemical, we are looking at the very likely possibility of effectuating a severe outcome to the central nervous system with the melancholic conclusion of unconsiousness. Not even touching upon the physical aspect of this chemical and the absorption through the skin, the occupational condition of being layed open to such an undesirable and injurious object such as xylene, should be evaluated by a physician for maximal airborne concentrations that may cause adverse health ramifications to those breathing organs in our chest.
In a nutshell...stay away from xylene!
How was that George?!
I love it when Leanna talks dirty...Hey Steve, I saw your other post and commented on it. All in fun, as I think you knew...