Catalogue of the type specimens of caucasian large mammalian fauna in the collection of the national museum of Georgia

Abstract

In the National Museum of Georgia are stocked the specimens of large animals, which once inhabited and dwell at present in the Caucasian territory. This catalogue contains description of animals, specimens of which are preserved in the collections of the National Museum of Georgia. The majority of specimens are of unique, academic, historic and cultural importance. Most of the specimens are Caucasus and its neighbor regions in origin, and form a good reference collection for the study of the Caucasus fauna. It is the intent of this work to support large mammalian collection of the National Museum of Georgia by detailed, original catalogue; to foster accessibility of collection data at the international level; to highlight the history of collection development; to describe the large mammals of this region that represented by specimens in the collections of the National Museum of Georgia. Catalogue consists of five parts: 1. Introduction; 2. The illustrated description of species and subspecies in the collections of Museum; 3. Index of skins and stuffed large mammalian animal species. Most of the specimens are labeled with a description which includes the locale of the animals capture, the date, the name of the person who collected the specimen, and the name of the person who classified (it is arranged in chronological order in tables); 4. References; 5. Index of Latin, Georgian, Russian and English names of animals.