type specimen

American  

noun

Biology.

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

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type specimen British  

noun

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

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Etymology

Origin of type specimen

First recorded in 1890–95

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

type specimen

Among them was the original type specimen of the Himalayan pit viper, which helped researchers confirm the snake's true scientific identity.

From Science Daily ● May 26, 2026

The shoulder bone is especially valuable because it was the first A. sediba fossil to be discovered and is the reference, or type specimen, that defines the species.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 13, 2023

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

The type specimen of H. habilis, for example, includes a 1.8-million-year-old lower jaw called OH 7 from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 4, 2015

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

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