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THIS WEEK IN
CALIFORNIA WILD

Here At The Academy

Earth Appreciation

Victoria Schlesinger

Jean DeMouthe, Senior Collections Manager of the Invertebrate Zoology and Geology Department, looks at some of the 25,000 mineral specimens housed by the Academy. photo: Dong Lin

Under Wild California Hall, halfway down a long row of wood cabinets, is a drawer full of crinoid fossils. Shadowy impressions of these flower-like starfish relatives cover chips of rock dating back hundreds of millions of years. Jean DeMouthe picks up one specimen from Missouri, where some of the Academy’s oldest fossils were found. “Most of the Academy’s invertebrate collection is from the Pacific basin,” she says, “but if you want to see the really old stuff, you have to go inland where there’s less geologic activity.”

DeMouthe regularly wends her way through the maze of cabinets and containers that hold the Academy’s collection of fossils, diatoms, and minerals. As Senior Collections Manager for Geology, it’s her job to organize and care for the Academy’s materials and make them available for scientists, academics, commercial geologists, and artists who come here from all over the world.

The collection not only includes the world’s third largest collection of diatoms, but also 25,000 mineral specimens representing two-thirds of the 3,000 mineral species known. “Most museums don’t keep collections of rocks,” DeMouthe explains, “but of their building blocks—minerals.”

Minerals are natural, inorganic, crystalline substances that each have a distinctive chemical composition. In contrast, rocks, such as basalt or granite, can be made up of two or more minerals. Minerals are the “ingredients” of rocks, much the way sugar, flour, and eggs together make a cake. To illustrate the point, DeMouthe pulls open a drawer whose colorful contents sparkle and gleam. She holds up a piece of dioptase, a deep green, glassy mineral, and then a pinkish-green splinter of tourmaline.

Among the mineral species is a drawer of 24 delicately carved Buddhist bodhisattva statues. Given many years ago by the department store Gumps, these are among the many donations continually being incorporated into the collection. Thought to be from Burma, the statues are carved from beryl, an exceptionally hard mineral whose green and blue varieties are better known as emerald and aquamarine. “The gem collection complements the mineral collection,” explains DeMouthe. “Together they allow people to see and learn about minerals in their natural state and after they have been worked.”

Every year DeMouthe travels to gem and mineral shows “with my suitcase full of rocks” to inform aficionados about the Academy’s collection and the specimens that are available for study or display. She also looks to acquire new specimens that will fill gaps in the collection. At any given time, numerous specimens from the collection are on loan to universities, museums, and public exhibits. DeMouthe coordinates these loans and keeps track of specimens in Academy exhibits such as Life Through Time, Gems and Minerals, and Earthquake!

Thirty years ago, DeMouthe says, she “started at the bottom of the food chain” in the Academy’s then-Geology Department. One of very few women with a degree in geology, she worked as a curatorial assistant in the shell and fossil collection, and obtained a doctorate in science education from the University of California at Berkeley. Today, she is chair of the Academy’s Conservation Committee, which includes the eight collections managers and the library archivist. Together, they decide how best to preserve and use the Academy’s extensive collections. DeMouthe also teaches a course in natural history conservation to museum studies graduate students at San Francisco State, and is the acting geologist for San Mateo County.

While much of her time is spent in the collections labyrinth, DeMouthe does get out into the field at least once a year. This summer, she hopes to spend a couple of weeks in Nevada hunting for rare minerals.

Her trip begins long before she reaches Nevada. “I start in the library studying old and new maps of the region, aerial photos, and mining reports,” she says. Often she sifts through mine tailing piles in search of rare minerals that were of no interest to the miners. While she clearly enjoys her digs, she warns that expeditions aren’t all fun. “It’s hot, it’s dusty, you walk a lot, and you don’t necessarily know where you’re going.”

When not relaxing with pick and shovel, DeMouthe plays keyboard with The Chopsaw Lounge, a jazz band made up of Academy staff. She also keeps an ever-growing collection of glass baubles and has recently finished writing what she dubs “a trashy western novel.”

DeMouthe says she doesn’t have a favorite mineral, just “favorite specimens... in the same way you have a favorite kid in the neighborhood.” Sliding open another drawer, she smiles with pride as she picks up a log about as long and thick as her forearm. It glitters a milky green and is threaded with pearly white furrows.

“It took millions of years for this wood to change into opal one molecule at a time,” she says. Looking at the gemstones and ancient life forms large and small that fill the drawers, you can see there are an awful lot of kids to like.