Description
The mollusk collection has been part of Carnegie Museum since it began in 1896, starting with the collection of George Clapp (honorary curator of malacology at Carnegie Museum). The current collection contains more than 150,000 lots (1.3 million specimens) from marine, freshwater, and land environments, from the mid-1800s to present, representing 6 of the 7 classes of mollusks, and with holdings from every continent and ocean, mostly from North America (75% of collection) and Europe (13% of collection). Taxonomic strengths are freshwater mussels (Unionoida) of North and South America (including the important collection of Arnold Ortmann, who literally wrote the book on North American Unionoida); terrestrial gastropods of North America, especially minute species (more specimens of the tiny Punctum minutissimum than all other museums combined) with the world’s largest collection of land snails from northern Appalachia; and the world’s largest collection of freshwater pill clams (Sphaeriidae, primarily from Victor Sterki and including more than 1000 type lots, still being cataloged). Many of our historical specimens of freshwater and terrestrial mollusks have some of the most detailed locality information compared to other museums. The specimen collection currently ranks 11th largest in USA. The current section head’s (curator of collections) expertise is land snails of North America.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 176,063 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Carnegie Museums. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has not been registered with GBIF
Keywords
Occurrence
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Assistant Curator
- 4400 Forbes Avenue
- User
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | https://ipt.idigbio.org/resource?r=cmnh-mollusks |
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