A National Science Foundation grant was awarded to Shannon Hackett (PI) and Lawrence Heaney, Bruce Patterson and John Bates (co-PI's) in the Zoology Department's Bird and Mammal Divisions for the purchase two large cryogenic storage vessels. Each of these vessels is capable of holding 30,000 tissue samples. It is our goal that these first two vessels will pave the way to establishing a formal collection of genetic resources associated with the Pritzker Lab and the various Museum collections. This is among the first of such facilities in a natural history museum.