Discovered: 150-year-old platypus and echidna specimens that proved some mammals lay eggs
Jars of tiny platypus and echidna specimens, collected in the late 1800s by the scientist William Caldwell, have been discovered in the stores of Cambridge’s University Museum of Zoology. At the time of their collection, these specimens were key to proving that some mammals lay eggs — a fact that changed the course of scientific […]
DNA reveals the evolutionary history of museum specimens
Museum specimens held in natural history collections around the world represent a wealth of underutilized genetic information due to the poor state of preservation of the DNA, which often makes it difficult to sequence. An international team, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Museum of Natural History of the City […]