Thousands of Fossils Sit Forgotten in Museum Drawers. How one Paleontologist is Changing That

Your local natural history museum probably displays its most impressive fossils front and center, ready to awe visitors. But some museums also house troves of other remains, filed away in drawers, that could reveal helpful details about their eras of origin. Usually, there’s no scientific literature describing these fossils, and only museum workers have access to them. Researchers call these unstudied items “dark data.”