I love museum collections. They are truly wondrous places that document the curiosities of nature as well as the stories of the people who have tried to better understand those tales. So you can imagine my delight when University of Iowa paleontologist Christopher Brochu dropped me off in the college’s fossil repository last Friday for some independent exploration. As Brochu led me into the study space, passing by mastodon bones laid out on a cart and a titanothere skull nestled in a corner passage, I started making a mental list of all the doors I was going to pry open just to see what was inside.

One cabinet door stood out from the rest. Most of the