It’s been floating in fluid for much longer than the nine months usually afforded to unborn humans. But staff at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History can’t say much more about the age or origins of a preserved fetus.

PGMNH Executive Director Lori Mannel recently found the pinky-sized fetus in a hand-blown glass jar within a metal case in the museum’s basement, among other specimens suspended in alcohol or formalin. The discovery was part of the Museum Foundation’s effort to inventory tens of thousands of objects. Items that are not catalogued are flagged and evaluated for inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection.

Because there was no documentation on the fetus, Mannel determined it’s not officially part of the museum’s collection. And since human remains require special handling, she notified P.G. City Manager Tom Frutchey.

“It’s not Foundation property. I couldn’t even say it’s city property,” Mannel says. “What it is is a two-and-a-half-month-old fetus.”

Frutchey asked the P.G. Police Department to investigate the fetus’s origins and help determine what to do with it. “It’s not something we can prove we’ve legally acquired,” he says.

Cmdr. John Nyunt determined the jar had been in the museum at least since the 1960s; the rest is a mystery. “There was very little information,” he says. “Does it go to another institution? What’s the proper way to handle a human fetus?”

Former PGMNH Director Paul Finnegan says that when he joined the museum in 1979, the fetus was among preserved specimens like skate eggs and sardines donated by Ed “Doc” Ricketts. The fetus’s stained hands and “ossification classification” indicated it had been used for educational purposes, perhaps to study early bone development.

“Some of the items were catalogued, some weren’t. That’s not uncommon with early museum collections,” he says. “[The fetus] may have been in the collection since the 1930s. I speculate it may have been from a doctor who retired and donated it to the museum.”

The American Association of Museums, which accredits the PGMNH, doesn’t offer much guidance for this particular pickle. AAM standards broadly state that human remains are to be handled with respect and responsibility, according to spokesman Dewey Blanton.

Officials haven’t yet decided what to do with the fetus, now in the police evidence room. Frutchey decided against initiating a formal process to accession it into the collection, which leaves the option of transferring possession to another institution, such as the Monterey Peninsula College biology department.

“My decision was based on what was best for the fetus,” Frutchey says. “We don’t have any other fetuses in our collection. It is not a focus of the museum.”

But Esther Trosow, a former museum archivist and current member of the city’s Museum Board, suggests the Foundation and the city have been too quick to offload the specimen. In her view, there’s nothing sinister about a natural history museum housing the fetus, which she speculates may have been donated by Ricketts.

“The museum’s collection is an eclectic blend of objects that have made their way into the museum through various means over the course of 100 years,” she says. “The unique charm of the museum is its variety.”