type specimen

American  

noun

Biology.

1. an individual organism from which the description of a species has been prepared.

---

type specimen British  

noun

1. Also called: holotype.  biology the original specimen from which a description of a new species is made

---

Etymology

Origin of type specimen

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

type specimen

In 2020, the authors set a goal to get a genome sequence for every Psilocybe type specimen.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 9, 2024

Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

From Slate ● Jan. 30, 2023

But the type specimen of another species, H. rudolfensis, is a 2.1-million-year-old skull without teeth or a lower jaw.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 4, 2015

When scientists disagree on whether something is a new species or a variant of a known one, they often need to refer back to the type specimen or even return to where it was collected.

From Nature ● Sep. 12, 2013

Unfortunately, after his bones were prepared and assembled, it was found that they showed signs of incipient syphilis, hardly a feature one would wish to preserve in the type specimen for one’s own race.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson