WITHIN BIOLOGY, the consummate synthetic, big-picture science is systematics and the fundamental resource and tool for systematics is natural history collections. Without systematics there is no unifying theme to the study of biology. Without natural history collections there is no systematics. Society and the institutions that house natural history collections must rediscover the value of those collections. These collections are a world treasure, a cultural heritage, an intellectual trust, a societal and institutional responsibility.

Paleontology and paleontological collections contribute uniquely to the sciences of systematics and ecology. They provide the record of change through geological time evidence of the changes in the characteristics of species, changes in ecological associations of biota, and a record of abiotic global and regional climatic change. The study of this historical record allows the identification of the locations of certain sets of conditions from the past, illuminates our understanding of the present, and enables our prediction of future changes on a global scale.