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Type Specimens

Type specimens represent a single specimen, or any one of a set of specimens, designated in the original publication of a new scientific name for the organism being named. Each taxonomic family, genus, and species has a name-bearing type specimen, providing an objective standard of reference for the application of the name it bears. Any later scientific work that addresses the taxonomy of a group needs to find and examine as much of the original type material as possible, in order to understand the work that has gone before. The Department of Herpetology holds 60 holotypes, which represent the primary specimen used to reference a species name, and over 741 paratypes, or secondary specimens used to define a taxonomic name.