Mansfield Parkyns, the Shoebill Balaeniceps rex and its type specimen

Mansfield Parkyns (1823‒94) returned to Britain in 1849 from an extended trip to Abyssinia, the Sudan and Egypt, during which time he had acquired two specimens of Shoebill Balaeniceps rex Gould, 1850, from c.10°N on the White Nile in Sudan. Along with much of his remaining bird collection, one of these was donated by his daughters to the Nottingham Natural History Museum at Wollaton Hall in 1926, whereas the other was presented to the then British Museum (Natural History), now Natural History Museum (NHMUK), in the same year. More recently, there has been uncertainty as to whether Gould used one specimen or both for his description and, if only one, which. Drawing extensively on unpublished archival information, this paper concludes that the NHMUK specimen should be treated as the holotype.

Citation

Robert P. Prŷs-Jones, Kathryn Rooke, and Andrew King "Mansfield Parkyns, the Shoebill Balaeniceps rex and its type specimen," Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 146(2), 216-220, (3 June 2026). https://doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v146i2.2026.a7

Type

Journal Article

Item Description

NHM Repository

ISSN

0007-1595