Christina Franzén-Bengtson
Curator emerita.
Contact
Phone: +46 (0)8 519 541 77
E-mail: christina.franzen@nrm.se
Billing and Mailing Address:
Education
MSc Uppsala University, 1965.
Teachers College Göteborg and Värnamo 1965–1966.
PhD Uppsala University, 1983.
Responsibilities
As curator emerita I am not employed at the museum and do not have formal responsibilities, but I take part in the daily departmental work and continue my work with the library and collections.
Interests
I chose echinoderms to be my preferred group of study, partly for their beauty, partly for their long history from the early Cambrian to the present, and partly for their adaptability to changing surroundings, as shown by their presence from shallow-water coral reefs to many thousands of meters depth in the deep-sea grabens. Their very special skeletal structure with porous ossicles made of single calcite crystals makes echinoderm fragments easy to identify in the rock, even when you do not know to which sub-group they belong.
I find work with collections, such as sorting, identification and registration of specimens to be both fun and inspiring. It is most relaxing to pick microfossils from elutriated marl samples. At the same time, it is both a pleasure and a challenge to try to identify to which kind of animal each of hundreds of now dissociated skeletal ossicles belong.
Literature is an interest that is useful for work in the professional library at the Department of Palaeobiology. When researchers retire they often donate their professional libraries to the Department. It is with awe that I handle beautifully illustrated books, sometimes centuries old, that have once belonged to one of the great scientists of palaeontology.
After retirement I have mostly dedicated my time to our collections and our library. I have a number of projects that could and may be revived (mostly early Cambrian echinoderms).