Conservation and restoration of fur objects made from keratin, which is also the protein that makes up skin, feathers, nails, hooves, claws, and horns. "The way I think a lot of people understand fur versus hair is in the density of follicles," says Ross McPhee, Curator of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History. "So for fur-bearing animals—which were converted into coats and so-forth—people always wanted it to be something that was very dense, so there’s the idea therefore that fur is dense, and it certainly is in [the] kinds of fur-bearers that we use for this purpose. Whereas hair is not
Debra Nails Debra Nails Debra Nails (born November 15, 1950) is an American philosophy professor and well known classics scholar who taught at Michigan State University. Nails earned her M.A. in philosophy and classical Greek from Louisiana State University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1993. Previously, she taught in the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion at Mary Washington College. Nails taught courses on the history of philosophy, continental rationalism, metaphysics, and modern philosophy. Nails' work primarily focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, feminist philosophy, and early modern philosophy. She