type specimen
1
9.1
- noun
- /taɪp ˈspɛsɪmən/
- Specialized
:
especimen tipo
- For legalistic reasons in apportioning scientific names, all species must have a "type" specimen—a single preserved creature that becomes the official name bearer for the species.
Examples
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When she was sure they had all 379 letters entered correctly, she had the program compare Ponter's sequence to the one she'd extracted from the Neanderthal type specimen at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum.
Fiction book (2002) -
There have been large-scale efforts at the Smithsonian Institution, Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, Arizona State University, and elsewhere to produce high-quality images of type specimens.
Academic text (2011) -
I was preparing to write my book on freshwater fishes, and I went to the museum to look at some of the type specimens.
Blog text (21) -
Each plant species in the African Plants digital library is represented by high-resolution digital images of type specimens provided by participating herbaria.
Academic text (2007) -
Although not the first ichthyosaur to be discovered, it became the type specimen of Ichthyosaurus—the scientifically described specimen for which the genus was officially named.
Academic text (1995) -
And from that point forward, any other member of that species is compared back to that type specimen.
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So the type specimen becomes the definition of normal for that given species.
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All 515 type specimens were in pristine condition.
Synonyms
A single animal or plant used to name and describe a new species
Surface Forms
Morphology
The combination of 'type' (a class or standard) and 'specimen' (an individual example) yields a readily inferable notion of a specimen that represents a type, so learners can guess it means a representative example. However the exact technical meaning — the single original specimen used to describe and name a new species — is specialized and not fully predictable from everyday knowledge of the words. Because the core idea is compositional but the precise taxonomic sense requires domain knowledge, this is best rated semi-transparent.
Etymology
Type specimen comes from when scientists chose one real plant or animal as the model for a new species. They kept that single specimen in a museum and called it the type so everyone could see which creature the name meant. That's why today type specimen means 'the original example on which a species name is based'.