Zoological Museum > Collections > Vertebrates
Description of the collections of the Vertebrate Department
THE FISH COLLECTION
The fish collection holds about one third of the 25,000 known species. Both fresh- and saltwater species from all over the world are represented. Especially rich collections come from the Danish marine expeditions "Ingolf", "Dana", "Atlantide" and "Galathea". The following collections should be emphazised:
Forsskål's Herbarium
During the Danish expedition to the Red Sea "The Arabian Journey" (1761-1767) Peter Forsskål collected and described 151 species of fish. Today material of 65 species remains, of which 58 are types (cf. Klausewitz and Nielsen 1965). The collection consists of dried skins with a few remaining bones (Types from Forsskål's Herbarium can be found in The Type Collection Database).
Fishes from Greenland
For about 200 years fishes have been collected in Greenlandic waters. Consequently the collection holds representatives of almost all species reported from Greenland, often in large series. The material treated by Adolf S. Jensen is included here.
Larval fishes This collection is dominated by larvae from tropical and subtropical coastal areas and from oceanic and deep-sea fishes. By far the major part was collected during the "Dana" cruises.
Deep-sea fishes
The main sources are the "Dana" and "Galathea" expeditions. During the circumnavigation in 1928-30 the "Dana" used pelagic, fine-meshed gear, often down to about 1000 meters, which resulted in an exceptionally rich collection of both larvae and small, adult, mesopelagic fishes. During the circumnavigation in 1950-52, the "Galathea" used coarse-meshed bottom-gear down to the greatest depths, so the result is dominated by large bottom-living fishes.
Types
The type collection holds about 1500 primary and secondary types.
THE HERPETOLOGICAL COLLECTION:
The Danish reptiles and amphibians are well represented in the collections, and not least thanks to a single collector (R. Skovgaard), the Museum has representative collections from the rest of Europe as well.
The Museum possesses fine exotic collections from the earlier colonies of Denmark, e.g., from the earlier Danish West Indies. This material was treated by Reinhardt & Lütken (1862).
From the earlier settlements on the Coast of Guinea, the Museum possesses a small, but very fine collection of snakes, many of which formed the basis for the description of new species (Reinhardt, 1843), among others the spitting cobra, Naja nigricollis. Reinhardt´s paper has been translated in English (Rasmussen & Hughes, 1997).
Reinhardt increased the collections personally by undertaking three collecting trips to Brazil. The material was later treated by Reinhardt & Lütken (1861).
Most of the very-representative collections of reptiles and amphibians can be traced back to a single expedition or a single person.
Thus, the Noona Dan Expedition (1961-1962) brought home a fine collection of terrestrial amphibians and reptiles from the Philippines and Melanesia and marine sea snakes from the Pacific.
Since 1985, Arne Redsted Rasmussen has personally more than doubled the number of sea snakes in the collections.
The Museum has fine collections of anuran amphibians, most of which have been collected by Arne Schiøtz in connection with his studies on tree frogs from West Africa (1967). Later Arne Schiøtz extended his studies (1985) to include the East African tree frogs as well.
Since 1970, the Museum, including the staff at the herpetological section, has made extensive collection tours to East Africa. In consequence, the section has abundant collections (especially snakes) from this area.
In May 2005 the then curator of herpetology, Jens B. Rasmussen passed away after a short period of illness. Jens Rasmussen was curator of herpetology at the museum since 1977. His research area focused on phylogeny and biogeography of African snakes and through his work Jens became one of the leading specialists in this field. During his last years Jens worked with a comprehensive revision of the material kept in major collections, with the aim of producing a speciation atlas for African snakes. The work will be published posthumously.
THE BIRD COLLECTION:
The main bird collection comprises study skins, well above 100,000 specimens of 5700 species. This collection is arranged in systematic order, and within each species the specimens are arranged according to geographical area (Denmark, the North Atlantic areas Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, Scandinavia and other geographical areas).
Half of this collection is from Denmark and the North Atlantic areas, most of these originating from a program for collecting dead birds near Danish lighthouses in the late 1800s, and from the private collection of Mr. Lehn Schiøler. This latter collection includes >20,000 waterfowl specimens, collected for studies of seasonal and age-related plumage variation. The collection of gyrfalcons Falco rusticolus comprises ca. 800 specimens, most from Greenland.
Other geographical areas well represented are West Siberia (Hans Johansen), Afghanistan (Knud Paludan), coast of China (Axel Hemmingsen), the Philippines and Melanesia (Galathea and Noona Dan expeditions; L. Ferdinand, Finn Salomonsen, Torben Wolff, Jon Fjeldså), Tanzania (Thorkild Andersen) and Brazil highland (Reinhardt), and there is considerable recent collections from the Andes mountains (Jon Fjeldså, Niels Krabbe) and Tanzania (Jon Fjeldså).
6000 mounted birds, mainly from former public exhibitions, comprise material from all over the world. A historically interesting collection is ca. 100 mounts from the beginning of the 19th Century (Peter C. Wöldike). The egg collections comprise 17.000 clutches, mainly of Nordic birds, but also some uncatalogued exotic material.
Anatomical collections comprise ca. 10.000 spirit specimens and 15,000 skeletons (half of these being body skeletons of birds kept as study skins). These collections comprise significant series of specimens of known age (mainly Cygnus olor, Accipiter gentilis, Buteo buteo, Larus argentatus) and also many exotic species. The tissue collections for molecular research comprise ca. 28,000 samples of nearly 3000 species.
The following rarities should be mentions: a dodo (Didus ineptus) skull and considerable subfossil material of dodo and solitaire; two mounted specimens, an egg, soft parts (in spirit) and some skeletal material of great auk (Pinguinus impennis), a crested shelduck (Tadorna cristata) and ca. 40 type specimens.
Nearly all the material has been identified to species, and 85% is catalogued, and information easily retrievable. However, because of the very insufficient staffing, very little (apart from the recently developed tissue collections) is yet in electronic catalogues, and it is therefore difficult to provide data review for specific sites or geographical areas.
6900 sound recordings of birds (by N. Krabbe) are made available as CDs (for South America) and also deposited at The British Library Sound Archive, London (”BLOWS”) and Macaulay Library, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (“LNS”).
In close collaboration with Centre for Macroecology, the section is developing distributional databases for birds (global and regional) and for African vertebrates (ca. 1½ million data entries so far).
THE MAMMAL COLLECTION:
The mammal collections hold approximately 40,000 specimens - preserved either as skins + skulls (or whole skeletons), mounted specimens, or whole specimens or parts in alcohol or formalin.
Representation of species is generally good (ca. 1500 of the World's ca. 4010 mammal species), and most geographical regions are reasonably well covered.
About 80 types.
Characteristic for the collection is its early foundation. It has a rather large representation of species, which are now very rare, threatned with extinction, or extinct, and which have special value because they can no longer be collected.
These collections not only have a scientific value, but also attract artists, historians, writers, etc. The collections also hold many newer specimens and are of course currently supplemented following certain collection strategies.
Particular strengths:
Danish mammals:
Large series of most Danish species, with a good geographic representation. Of special mention are the very large series of Danish bats (ca. 3,500 specimens), rodents, harbour porpoises, otters, badgers, and others, reflecting also some of the dominant research activities of the mammal section.
Greenland mammals, terrestrical as well as marine:
Very large and geographically well represented series of most species (exceptionally large series of polar bear, reindeer, musk ox, whalrus, narwhal).
Whales:
A very famous collection of whale skeletons with a good taxonomic representation, containing many specimens from the last century, but also many of a more recent date, as the policy of the last 20 years has been to collect all whales that stranded and died on the Danish shores.
Brazil: Valuable collection from last century (P.W.Lund).
West Pacific:
Collection from the Noona Dan Expedition and others.
Collections from East Africa and Sudan.
THE QUATERNARY ZOOLOGY COLLECTIONS:
The section keeps collections of Late Pleistocene and Holocene vertebrates from Denmark, Greenland and South America.
The Late Pleistocene (last interglacial-glacial cycle) collection from Denmark and Greenland consists of mammalian bone remains found redeposited in glacial sediments. The largest and most important fossil assemblage is, however, the Late Weichselian and Holocene bones of mammals, birds, fishes and a few reptiles and amphibians. These vertebrate bones are found in situ in geological as well as archaeological context.
The archaeozoological material represents an almost complete record of all bone materials excavated on archaeological sites in Denmark and Greenland, chronologically distributed from Late Palaeolithic to Historical Time and from Palaeoeskimo to the Norse Cultures.
The section has built up its own comparative collection of recent vertebrates especially prepared for the identification of archaeozoological bone materials. This can of course be supplemented with the proper collections of modern vertebrates already curated at the Department.
The main collections of foreign fossils are the skeletons of Edentata from La Plata, donated by V. Lausen and the fossils from Minas Gerais, Brazil, collected by Peter Wilhelm Lund. The Lausen collection was bought by Lausen in 1860 and consists of complete or almost complete skeletons of ground sloths and glyptodonts. The Lund collection consists of bones excavated by Lund around 1830-40 in limestone caves near Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais. The bones represent mammals (including Homo), birds and reptiles and include several type specimens of rodents, edentates and primates. Because of weathering and water transport, the majority of the bones are strongly fragmented, but also complete skulls and other bones are preserved. Of special interest are the remains of some of the earliest South Americans, represented by a sample of skulls and lim bones of Homo sapiens from the Lake Sumidouro.