Digitizing CVB's Crocodile Fossil Collection to Support Collaborative, Community-Centered Research

Primary Investigator: Dr. Evon Hekkala, Fordham University and the American Museum of Natural History 

Dr. Mai Fahmy is a postdoc working on creating a framework for place-based, co-produced practices in systematics and taxonomy, or the study of assigning species identities. She is generating a database to house diverse data types, including archival documentary footage, fossils, DNA, and cultural iconography, to promote the practice of community consent and collaboration in taxonomy and systematics with crocodylians as a model system. Crocodylians are an opportune group for which to compile a variety of data because they have been revered throughout time and across civilizations, often as symbols of wisdom, health, and compassion. With surface scanning technology, she is digitally reconstructing specimens of Voay robustus, Madagascar’s extinct endemic “horned” crocodile, excavated from Christmas River in 2008.

The story of Voay itself is a testament to the importance of deferring to source communities in assigning species identities. Malagasy peoples have long documented two crocodile species in Madagascar, a smaller, more gracile species (Crocodylus niloticus, the Nile crocodile) and a more robust, horned crocodile (what is now recognized as Voay robustus). European explorers discounted this narrative, insisting both were C. niloticus. With modern morphological and genomic evidence, western science has at last recognized Voay as an endemic species distinct from the Nile crocodile. Digitizing the collection will aggregate these narratives, combining them with different forms of evidence in order to center and attribute Traditional Knowledge in the study of Madagascar’s natural history.

Photo courtesy of Johanna Mitra, 2023