The Type Room

This is one of the rooms at AMNH where type series are kept, in this case for fish. A type series is that original set of specimens lodged at a museum when a new species is first described. These are therefore very valuable specimens, in a sense irreplaceable!  Its hard not to feel the gravitas of the mission of museums when faced with something as fundamental as a type series.  We also had a chance to see real coelacanths (they're bigger than I thought!), which was very exciting.