Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Section of Amphibians & Reptiles

For additional information please contact Stephen P. Rogers, Collection Manager.

The Section of Amphibians and Reptiles maintains a collection of over 207,500 specimens and ranks as about the ninth largest amphibian and reptile collection in the U.S. Ninety percent of them are fluid preserved; others are preserved as skeletons, skins, mounts, or cleared and stained preparations.

The collection includes the largest and most complete collection of Pennsylvania amphibians and reptiles in existence, and significant collections from adjacent states, particularly Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. There are collections from all parts of the United States, and most parts of the world including major collections from the Caribbean, Mexico and Guatemala, Belize, Paraguay, northern South America, Spain, South Africa, Cameroon, and India and Sri Lanka. The collection of North American freshwater turtles is among the largest in the world.

Notable historic collections rich in type specimens are the Taylor Philippine collection, the Le Boutellier collection of South American snakes, and collections from early Museum expeditions to the Isle of Pines and Angola. Collection data are completely computerized. The collection is without a Curator at present, but Collection growth has averaged 1-2% per year. There are approximately 35 new research loans a year handled by the Collection Manager, and around 80 research data inquiries are filled annually.

Research is supported by a library with an outstanding collection of 19th Century herpetological literature (Gunther Collection) and over 22,000 reprints.

Data on the collection, with respect to numbers of specimens held for each species, can be seen on the California Academy of Science Gopher server at http://www.calacademy.org/research/herpetology/Comb_Coll_Index/.

HerpNet

If you want detailed information on the specimens in the Carnegie Collection, the data is available on the HerpNET portal: http://www.herpnet.org/portal.html

After reading the terms of use on this page, click the Search Museum Data link. In the Network Query section, make sure the View specimen records option is selected and click the Build Query button. In the resultant page, under "Select data providers" click Carnegie Museum of Natural History - Amphibians and Reptiles.

Scroll further down the page to select query conditions built to specifications of geography, species, collector, catalog number, etc. or any combination of these criteria.

After selecting the search criteria, you can choose the mapping result set or the full specimen result set, set the specify the record limit and click on submit query. There will be a brief period while the data is being obtained and then depending on which result set was chosen, a map can be created and a mapping data set retrieved, or a full specimen data set viewed. The data may be downloaded by copying the table on screen, or by clicking download tabular data. Not all specimens have been georeferenced yet, nor all georeferenced data repatriated with the individual specimens. Note the field individual count as exchanged specimens have a zero in this field, while some specimens are lot catalogued with many individuals having the same catalog number.

 

Carnegie Museum of Natural History 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-4080 Section of Amphibians and Reptiles: 412-622-3258 or 3255 Science & Research | CMNH Home