On a mild summer’s eve in 1876, the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope led a group of men armed with shovels and pickaxes to set up camp on the banks of the Judith River, a tributary of the Missouri in central Montana. Almost directly across from them, on the other side of the river, was a Native American village comprising several hundred richly ornamented tipis, home to about 2,000 Apsaalooké, also known as the Crow. These were dangerous times. Just 200 miles away, the discovery of gold in Montana’s Black Hills was drawing white settlers into conflict with the Sioux, and earlier that year the US army had launched a campaign against the Sioux to drive them onto reservations, in what became known as the Great Sioux War of 1876. In June of that summer, under the leadership of Sitting Bull, the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne routed General Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Figure 4.1 Judith Basin, Montana Territory, as surveyed in 1875. One year later, Cope’s expedition pitched camp in the vicinity of the confluence of the Judith and Missouri rivers, near the spot labeled “Ft. Claggett” on the map. N. Peters, “Judith Basin: Drawn under the direction of Capt. W. Ludlow Corps of Engineers,” from William Ludlow, Report of a Reconnaissance From Carroll, Montana Territory, on the Upper Missouri, to the Yellowstone National Park, and Return Made in the Summer of 1875 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1876). Image courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com.
Although the Crow were allied with the US government against their traditional Sioux enemies, tensions ran high. Cope, a slim man with a contemporary Buffalo Bill-style beard, who was known as a fanatical “bone hunter,” therefore left no doubt that he was prepared to expose the expedition to danger in pursuit of fossils. The Judith River Group, a series of geological formations from the late Cretaceous located in Montana, was famous among specialists for its wealth of dinosaur remains.
Cope had the good sense to make overtures to the Crow that the fossil diggers posed no threat. From time to time, Crow chieftains crossed the Judith River and rode into the paleontologist camp to visit. One morning, as legend has it, they came upon Cope in the middle of his morning routine, cleaning his false teeth. In this awkward moment, Cope had no choice but to insert the dentures as the chieftains watched and welcome them with a broad smile of artificial teeth. They were astounded and requested repeat performances of this incredible feat. Word spread quickly about “Magic Tooth,” as the Crow dubbed Cope, and his extraordinary abilities. True or not, the story suggests that the Crow regarded the paleontologist as an innocuous if curious presence.
Figure 4.2 The late Edward Drinker Cope. From the Collections of the University of Pennsylvania Archives, Digital Image Number: UARC20041111003.
Figure 4.3 The late Othniel Charles Marsh. Courtesy of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, image #37641.
Indeed, in 1876, another struggle was raging across the American West and the pages of scientific journals: the Bone Wars, a heated feud between the two most important American vertebrate paleontologists of the nineteenth century, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Both extraordinary experts on fossil vertebrates and formerly close friends, the men also shared pronounced traits of vanity and competitiveness. As is so often the case with personal conflicts, one can only guess at the actual cause of the strife between Cope and Marsh. Cope was the first to experience publicly recorded defeat, which coincided with a personal betrayal, a combination of injuries that likely triggered the conflict. In 1868, Cope invited his friend Marsh to explore a rich fossil quarry in New Jersey; behind Cope’s back, Marsh struck a deal with the quarry owner that any new fossils be sent directly to his offices at Yale. The same year, Cope had described the new genus and species Elasmosaurus platyurus, misconstruing its unusual spinal anatomy. His incorrect interpretation of the vertebrae led him to confuse head and tail and mount the skull on the tip of the tail. Cope’s reconstruction of Elasmosaurus thus had an extremely long tail and very short neck. Of all people, Marsh was the one who detected this humiliating error; his response is said to have been “caustic, perhaps even gloating.” Cope was deeply affected. He corrected the embarrassing mistake in a new publication and even tried to buy back the entire first print run. Although the scientific public barely took notice of his gaffe, Cope resolved to even the score with Marsh. As Marsh later acknowledged, “When I informed Professor Cope of it, his wounded vanity received a shock from which it has never recovered, and he has since been my bitter enemy.”1
Figure 4.4 Cope’s incorrect reconstruction of Elasmosaurus platyurus, with the head mistakenly mounted on the actual tale. Cope, E. D., Synopsis of the extinct Batrachia and Reptilia of North America. Part I. Tafel II, Fig. 1 (Philadelphia: McCalla and Stavely, 1869). Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
Figure 4.5 A drawing by Cope with two incorrectly reconstructed Elasmosaurus in the lower foreground and the right background. Cope, E. D., The fossil reptiles of New Jersey, The American Naturalist 3: 84–91, 1869. Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
The Bone Wars were ultimately more of a “Dinosaur Rush,” although neither party shied away from aggressive tactics. Cope and Marsh each attempted to outdo the other in significant fossil discoveries. Marsh unearths a pterosaur along the Smoky Hill River in Kansas, whose size outstrips all pterosaurs discovered to date in Europe. Enter Cope, who digs further at the same site upon Marsh’s departure, and successfully. Cope finds a pterosaur even bigger than Marsh’s, along with a mosasaurus and many other spectacular fossils. Cope triumphs. In the ensuing years, the rivals dug and published like there was no tomorrow, each hoping to find an even bigger skeleton of an even more impressive dinosaur. In total, Marsh and Cope described more than 130 fossil vertebrate species, whose discovery and publication trace directly back to the competitive pressure of the Bone Wars.
Wars universally wreak destruction and suffering. Although the competition between Cope and Marsh ruined their reputations and ultimately their careers, it also helped lay the foundations of paleontology, providing evidence for the theory of evolution and filling natural history museums with fossils that draw curious crowds to this day. The Bone Wars wouldn’t end until the deaths of Cope and Marsh in 1897 and 1899. Who was the victor? The question remains open for debate to this day. Cope was considered the more brilliant scientist; Marsh, the better organizer and politician. Cope lacked the financial means to keep up with Marsh, who had government connections and discovered about twenty more new dinosaur species than Cope. On the other hand, Cope was the master of publication: 1,400 scientific publications, often of significant scope, is an impressive accomplishment, then as now. What have endured above all the rest are the countless scientific names of special, charismatic dinosaurs that every dino-loving child knows. Marsh described Triceratops, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and Allosaurus, among others, while Cope’s descriptions included Elasmosaurus and Coelophysis.
It’s not just these names, though, that prompt us to follow the trail of Cope, Marsh, and the Bone Wars. For the most part, we’re able to accept that after our inevitable death, we cease to exercise a physical presence and personal influence on earth. Although scientists are not fundamentally different from us in this regard, it’s not surprising that after a fulfilling life of research, they might hope for their results, books, and journal articles to represent a lasting legacy of influence after their passing. Cope, unquestionably one of the most influential American paleontologists of the early twentieth century, wanted to make absolutely sure that it wasn’t just his 1,400-plus publications and the 1,000-plus vertebrate fossils he’d described that remained unforgotten. He wanted to be remembered. Thus, during his lifetime, he ordered that his skull and bones be made available to science, and not just for some medical student to practice dissection. Instead (as some of the literature claims, at least), Cope aimed for a specific, unique purpose that would differentiate him from all other humans, even posthumously. His last will and unquestionably most serious testament was to become the type specimen for a special and unique animal species. Cope wanted to become the type specimen for Homo sapiens—humans. What Cope could not have anticipated beyond this absurdly megalomaniacal conceit, however, was that almost 100 years after his death, his skull would undertake a great journey back to North America’s most famous bone beds, the key battlegrounds of the Bone Wars.
As Cope’s life neared its end, he had to accept that he could not claim triumph in the Bone Wars. But that does not mean he accepted defeat. According to legend, to put one more over on Marsh, beyond the grave, Cope declared that his skeleton should find use retroactively as the central reference point for our own species. If Cope truly did have Marsh in mind when he did this, it was a genius play to ultimately triumph over his adversary. Dinosaurs be damned! He would become the most important individual of all humankind (in the eye of systematic biologists, at least), and what’s more, he, Cope, would have formally designated the type specimen, not Marsh, whose Stegosaurus specimen would pale miserably in comparison. Cope as the benchmark for Homo sapiens? The victor of the Bone Wars would be obvious.
In doing so, Cope made use of common procedures in the early days of taxonomy, which are comparatively loose by today’s standards. For today’s species descriptions, the clear designation of one or more type specimens is absolutely required. In the eighteenth century, however, at which point today’s formalized nomenclature was still in its infancy, this requirement did not exist, especially not for species whose taxonomic status was totally obvious. The human species, which Linnaeus formally named Homo sapiens in 1758, was unquestionably part of this category. Linnaeus hadn’t designated a type specimen, though—and why should he have?
Ultimately, Cope’s plan was not realized for a number of reasons. He may have bequeathed his skeleton to science, but science didn’t want it. Although type specimens don’t necessarily have to be especially typical representatives of their species, for our own species, of all things, one would set certain requirements. Cope’s deformed remains didn’t make the cut, and his skeleton ultimately landed in a large natural history collection, first at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and later in the University of Pennsylvania’s anatomy collection, cataloged under the Wistar inventory number 4989.
Figure 4.6 The skull of Edward Drinker Cope. Courtesy of Penn Museum, image #298584.
Why didn’t he make the cut? His bones were highly decalcified, which suggested the onset of syphilis. And it wasn’t just the syphilis. To understand why Cope’s skeleton couldn’t have become the type specimen for Homo sapiens, even if he’d been a world-class athlete who died in his prime, one must examine how the so-called type procedure operates in the naming of organisms.
Judging a Species by Its Traits
Taxonomists—who describe in meticulous detail which species of flies, wasps, mosquitos, bats, or other animals exist on earth—are commonly faced with a critical problem. After having studied a large number of individuals, taking note of various features, they will then begin to sort the individuals into groups based on their differences: prominent abdominal markings or not, head black or red, lateral section of thoracic segment exhibiting lengthwise grooves or smooth, with trunk or without, fin with three spikes or more. These and similar differences can be used to sort, and not according to some arbitrary bookkeeping principle, but with the thought in the back of one’s mind that every one of these groups represents a biological species that emerged in nature as the historical product of evolution. The result of such studies is a certain number of species that can be recognized by certain traits or combinations of traits and, most important, can later be used to categorize newly discovered individuals.
At this point in the process of discovering animal species, the scientist does not necessarily need to know which species have already been named and which are new finds. In the process of species discovery, one can easily do without names at first, devising a free-form labeling system for the supposed new species. Letters, numbers, or a combination of the two—anything goes. Taxonomists truly do fall back on this, but as soon as they’re convinced they know which species exist in the animal group they’ve prepared, it’s time to take a stand. They must decide which of the species they’ve differentiated have been described in the past and which are new discoveries that they may name.
To compare the species one has found with those that have already been described, one must first read the original description, in which the name in question was published and the new species established. With any luck, the description (which ideally includes images of key features) and the organism in question match perfectly. One can then assume that the animal one hopes to identify belongs to the species described. It is not uncommon, though, for this path not to lead to the desired result, and an example from the world of wasps can help illustrate why.
In 1758, in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus described a species of wasp he named Crabro arenaria. The species—a type of digger wasp—is now known scientifically as Cerceris arenaria, so its genus was changed. But that’s another story.
Linnaeus described the species with the following Latin words: “Abdominis fasciis quatuor flavis, primo segmento duobus punctis flavis,” or “abdomen with four yellow stripes, first segment with two yellow markings.” That was it: he didn’t need any more information to designate this species. Basically, within the context of the diversity known by 1758, Linnaeus was right. In the mid-eighteenth century, this paltry description was enough to help identify Cerceris arenaria based on its typical color pattern. We know more today, though. The genus Cerceris, which this digger wasp belongs to, comprised 863 species worldwide at last count and is thus one of the most species-rich genera in the entire animal kingdom. The United States is home to almost ninety Cerceris species, Western Europe to about forty, and many of these species have a color pattern similar to what Linnaeus used to describe Cerceris arenaria. Looking at the various species of digger wasps, it’s clear that the yellow markings on the first abdominal segment and the yellow stripes on the second through fourth abdominal segments present differently. On some species, the markings are so large that they touch and sometimes even appear to blend into a large patch. On others, the abdominal stripes are broken in the middle and look more like patches than stripes. Linnaeus’s description doesn’t help with distinguishing between Cerceris arenaria and other digger wasps in this genus.
Today’s specialists use much different traits to differentiate species in Cerceris. One specific trait divides all species directly into two groups: “lower plate of second abdominal segment, on the base, with clearly delimited raised area” versus “without raised area.” The European Cerceris arenaria doesn’t have this raised area, but Linnaeus doesn’t make note of that. Among the species that don’t have this raised area, Cerceris arenaria can be distinguished clearly from the others by the particular shape of its facial plate. This means that there’s a simple combination of traits—missing raised area, uniquely shaped facial plate—that one can use to recognize digger wasps with certainty.
Yet how can we know whether Linnaeus had this exact “missing-raised-area-but-featuring-uniquely-shaped-facial-plate” species in his sights when he described his Cerceris arenaria with the aforementioned color pattern? Comparing today’s animals to Linnaeus’s description isn’t helpful because different (structural) traits are now used, unlike in Linnaeus’s day when colors still sufficed.
This is where the types come into play. Like any other scientist, Linnaeus had a certain number of individuals at his disposal while compiling Systema Naturae. For Cerceris arenaria, it was a single female wasp. In species descriptions, this original material is known as the type material.
Since Linnaeus doesn’t name the traits relevant to modern descriptions, if scientists today want to clarify which species his original description of Cerceris arenaria refers to, they must examine the abdomen and cephalic shield of the type material. And what is the result of such a study? Let’s imagine we have representatives from five different digger wasp species laid out on the desk before us, bearing provisional names Cerceris A through Cerceris E, all of which share the color pattern Linnaeus described. Upon studying the type with regard to the structural traits needed to differentiate our five species, we know that the type for Cerceris arenaria matches Cerceris B. Based on this match, we can reason that, according to today’s standards, this one Linnaean individual belongs to the species with the provisional name Cerceris B. So there’s the biologically relevant reasoning. In nomenclatural terms, this means that by assigning the Cerceris arenaria type to Cerceris B, the Linnaean name carries over, and the nomenclaturally correct name for Cerceris B is thus Cerceris arenaria.
One could say that the name being discussed here clings to the type specimen. For this reason, a type is also referred to as a “name bearer.” The primary function of a type specimen is to be a name bearer.
To fully understand how important one of these type specimens can be, it’s best to consider a different scenario. Since Linnaeus’s description of Cerceris arenaria, taxonomists have been assigning individuals to this species. In scientific lingo, one says they’ve identified these animals as Cerceris arenaria. Now, imagine that one of these taxonomists discovered differences between two wasps identified as Cerceris arenaria and concluded that they were actually two different species that had been operating under the same name. The next step would be to describe both species in great detail, working out their differences and similarities and, finally, naming them. Which of these two species should keep the old name Cerceris arenaria and which should receive a new name? This question is answered by the type because in its function as name bearer, it “carries” the name applied to it over to the species to which it belongs. The other species, which the type doesn’t belong to, gets the new name.
Figure 4.7 An insect drawer containing damselflies of the genus Calopteryx, but here still bearing the older name Agrion. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Atypical Types
Type specimens—and this is something overlooked at times in biology—are thus not representatives of biological species but representatives of names of biological species. Their function is purely nomenclatural. They establish the name of the species they belong to, no more, and no less. Admittedly, the term “type” can be misleading. “Type” implies that the individual in question must be “typical” of the species it’s connected with. This is by no means the case. Every biological species demonstrates a degree of variability in its features, however small these differences may be. The easiest example for this biological phenomenon is humans. All it takes is a quick glance at our own relatives, with whom we share an incredibly high level of genetic correspondence. Yet we don’t all look the same, like peas in a pod. Each individual is different from all the rest. The same holds for every other biological species, even if the differences are usually less noticeable. One may need a microscope whose measuring scale reaches into the micrometers to tell the difference between individuals in a population of common green bottle flies. But there really are differences. Normally, variations of a given feature are divided among the population in such a way that certain characteristics and slight deviations appear frequently, whereas greater or even serious deviations are rare. Among Homo sapiens, for instance, about half of all women in the United States are between 5-foot-2 and 5-foot-6, while only five percent fall in the range of 4-foot-11 and shorter or 5-foot-8 and taller, respectively.2 This trend is reflected quite well in our everyday observations: a middle range occurs frequently, while extreme deviations are rare.
In mathematics, this kind of distribution of features is known as normal (or Gaussian) distribution, which is visually represented by the familiar bell curve. The middle of the bell represents those features that appear most frequently in the population. The more the features deviate from this value, the more the curve drops, and the more rarely these traits appear. What does this mean for the type? If a type specimen were expected to show its species’ “typical” features, then the given individual would have to fall within a particular, ideally narrow area under the middle part of the Gaussian bell curve. In the literal sense of the word, its features should be “typical” of its species. This is impossible for various reasons; in fact, it doesn’t even make sense. This kind of distribution curve of a population’s features can only be established when a large enough number of individuals is available—in other words, when the variability within a population can be assessed. As a rule, this isn’t possible with a limited number of available individuals. In many cases with newly discovered animal, there’s only one specimen, which appears to be different enough as to justify the description of a new species. No one can really say whether a single animal like this is “typical” of its species, and for this reason many systematic biologists advise that new species descriptions based on a single individual occur only as extraordinarily well-founded exceptions. A large number of animals is rarely available for the description of a species, and even then the criterion of what’s “typical” doesn’t help much. Because everything depends on the statistical sample size, newly discovered individuals later on can change the distribution curve of features so drastically that what was once seen as a typical animal suddenly doesn’t appear so typical anymore.
On a much more general level, nothing typical can be expected of a type. The concept of types is a nomenclatural tool that serves to secure the unambiguous assignment of a name to a species. Here, too, the central difference between biological nomenclature and biological taxonomy, which always causes confusion, is brought to bear: nomenclature is concerned with names only and has no influence on taxonomical interpretations. Types thus determine what a species must be named but not how the species is distinguished.
Whether by chance or intentionally, a type specimen can thus fall at any point of a Gaussian distribution of a population. Even if the type falls at the tip of the left or right tail, demonstrating the most extreme deviation from the mean, it can still fulfill its function as name bearer.
There, at least, is the rationale behind types and why they don’t need to be “typical,” however counterintuitive this may seem. In the reality of today’s species descriptions, more effort is made to select individuals that appear highly representative of the species. A selection can naturally only be made when there’s something to select—in other words, when multiple individuals are available. Taxonomists will then typically move forward in the following way: using all of the type specimens available, they’ll try to work out which features can justifiably be said to define the underlying species. In a species description, it’s thus not the type or types being described; rather, it describes the features of the (hypothetical) species to which the type belongs. To what extent the individual type specimens then deviate from the “ideal” established in the species description is summarized in a short paragraph, usually named “Variability” or similar. To ensure that a type can fulfill its function as a name bearer, it makes sense to select one from the lineup that has a lot (and ideally, all) of the features the species is assumed to have. This kind of “typical” individual specimen then serves as something of a model for the entire species.
The requirement to designate a holotype to make a new species description valid was incorporated into the nomenclature rules in 2000. In the past, publications would often include the basic statement that a species description was based on, say, three male specimens from Sudan. These individuals, uniformly labeled as types, are called “syntypes” and, as a group, count as a name bearer. Which is actually nonsensical, because in series such as these, the problem can arise that the syntypes belong to different species. New research results, previously overlooked features, and updated views on the range of variability within a species can provide evidence to show that the specimens in a type series actually belong to different species. This problem occurs frequently. This kind of type series clearly can’t fulfill the function of a name bearer. For instance, if a type series consists of two equally ranked individuals that actually belong to two different species, which of the two species should then bear the previously shared species name? In these cases, a “revising author”—that is, a scientist who is concerned with the taxonomy of these species—will retroactively appoint an individual animal from the syntype series as the single name bearer. This kind of retroactively designated individual is called a “lectotype” to distinguish it from a holotype, which is selected directly from the first. Following the selection of the lectotype, the remaining syntypes are consequently named “paralectotypes.” They have as little claim to being name bearers as paratypes do.
Yet another “type” of nomenclatural types is permitted in zoological taxonomy today. Not at all infrequently, a species’ original type material will be lost to the chaos of time, destruction of war, or improper handling and destructive infestation. This doesn’t pose a problem, provided the species’ taxonomic status can be confirmed without examining the type. But what to do when this isn’t possible—that is, when the identity of the species, based on the original description, remains unclear? In such cases, it is sometimes advisable to designate a “neotype,” or a “new type.” To do so, a new (and, if possible, newly captured) individual is selected, which can be assumed—with a degree of likelihood bordering on certainty—to belong to the same species as the original type material. For example, neotypes should come from the same habitat and a location as close to the original place of discovery as possible, and they should usually be the same sex and at the same developmental stage. Still, one can never be entirely sure that the animal that has been caught truly belongs to the originally named species. For this reason, the nomenclature rules state repeatedly, and with considerable emphasis, that the designation of a neotype is allowed only under certain conditions. An important one is that the original type can be proven to be truly, irretrievably lost. What’s more, it’s even required that the author explain the steps taken to retrieve the original material and why the attempt failed.
The second fundamental condition seems trivial but isn’t. Designating a neotype is permitted only if it serves to improve nomenclatural stability. In other words, a neotype may only be selected by necessity—that is, when it’s needed to solve a taxonomical problem. There are practical considerations behind this rule: neotypes—just like holotypes, lectotypes, and syntypes—are primary types, meaning that as compared to paratypes and paralectotypes (also known as secondary types), they are actual name bearers. Primary types vastly increase the value of a collection, and every museum prides itself on the number of primary types it can call its own, particularly those of popular species. What kind of museum director wouldn’t be happy, then, to see the number of types in the collection increase? The entomological collections of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, holds 33 million insect specimens in total, with 125,000 type records in the their online database. Holotypes, syntypes, and lectotypes were named in the original description, meaning they were available to the original author. For a museum, this means they either have them or they don’t. Literally speaking, these types of types are historical and can’t be newly “made.” Not so with neotypes. Basically, any old animal can be made a neotype, and any old scientist can establish it as such. There are plenty of alleged losses of types among the millions of already published names, with their millions of type specimens behind them. So why not designate a couple of neotypes to boost the number of primary types in a collection? At this point, the nomenclature rules are unambiguous. They forbid the designation of a neotype “as a matter of curatorial routine.”3
The fact that type specimens are linked to names, and not to certain biologically based ideas about the species, is in direct evidence when species are described multiple times. The principle of priority stipulates that the oldest name be given precedence. Yet what happens to the types and the name of junior synonyms when it turns out they refer to an already described species? Nothing, actually. They were chosen by the original author to represent this (now synonymous) name, and that’s what they’ll continue doing. There’s a rather well-known example for this sort of situation.
On display in the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde is one of the most important and well-known icons of evolutionary research, the so-called Berlin specimen of the “Urvogel”—or primordial bird—Archaeopteryx lithographica. After collecting dust in the back rooms of the museum for some time, in recent years, this truly magnificent skeleton has been displayed behind bulletproof glass for visitors to admire as part of a newly designed exhibition. In 1861, when Hermann von Meyer—a prominent financier in Frankfurt and active amateur paleontologist—described Archaeopteryx lithographica, the species’ complete fossil now on display in Berlin hadn’t even been unearthed yet. Instead, Meyer based the original Urvogel image on two other specimens: a single fossilized feather also housed in the Berlin collection and the so-called London specimen, a feathered skeleton discovered in the same region of the Solnhofen Limestone in southeastern Germany. There was a long-standing dispute surrounding whether Meyer’s isolated feather should count as the holotype of Archaeopteryx lithographica, or whether the London specimen should instead, which Meyer mentions as an aside in his original description of the feather. There is, however, evidence that Meyer attributed the new name to the feather alone and only personally studied the skeleton after the fact. To this day, the feather cannot be proven to belong to the same species as the Archaeopteryx lithographica specimen found later: between 1874 and 1876, almost fifteen years after Meyer’s original description and naming of the Urvogel, the miraculously intact specimen was found near the Bavarian town of Eichstätt and traded in for a cow by its finder. Several episodes later, it was ultimately acquired by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin through the financial support of Werner von Siemens. After comparing this specimen to its London counterpart, the Berlin curator Wilhelm Dames concluded that they were two different species. In 1897, he then described a new species based on the Berlin specimen, which he named Archaeopteryx siemensii, in honor of its patron, Werner von Siemens. The original description of Archaeopteryx siemensii is based unquestionably on only one specimen, which means that the Berlin specimen is the holotype of Archaeopteryx siemensii.
Figure 4.8 The type specimen of Archaeopteryx siemensii Dames, 1897, known as the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, C. Radke photo.
So far, so good. To this day, the question goes unresolved as to how many species are represented by the ten Urvogel specimens found since the nineteenth century. Even the Berlin specimen’s species assignment remains contentious among specialists in the evolution and systematics of birds and their dinosaurian relatives. There’s a lot to suggest that the specimen is a smaller representative of Archaeopteryx lithographica—in other words, that Archaeopteryx siemensii, described thirty-eight years after Hermann von Meyers’s original description, is a junior synonym of Archaeopteryx lithographica. Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin also presents its specimen in this way: on the plaque next to the display case, the species name Archaeopteryx lithographica is given. What’s important to note, however, is that the Berlin specimen still serves its original function as name bearer for the (junior and thus no longer valid) name Archaeopteryx siemensii. It will forever remain the holotype of Archaeopteryx siemensii, independent of its current or future taxonomical status. This makes sense. Should one assume, as many avian paleontologists do, that the isolated Berlin feather and the famous Berlin specimen belong to different species, their respective names remain fixed. The species the feather belongs to is thus Archaeopteryx lithographica; the other, which the Berlin specimen belongs to, is Archaeopteryx siemensii.
Sustainable Taxonomy
For the vast majority of zoological names, their type specimens are present in museum collections, available for examination by scientists. There are many possible reasons for the fact that occasional discussions or even arguments may arise regarding which individuals are the actual and true types. The root of these problems is usually that the initial publication did not provide a detailed discussion of which specimens the original description was really based on, which collection houses them, and how they may be recognized even centuries later. The respective specimens may be clearly tagged with an actual label, and they’re often depicted in publications. An important rule is often overlooked, however, even by biologists. In biological nomenclature, information is considered valid only once it has been published. Labels or collection catalogs may provide important additional information that helps in judging an individual’s taxonomical status. If the published data and unpublished labels or catalog content conflict with each other, then the published word takes precedence. Usually, one can safely assume that an animal labeled as the holotype is actually the holotype, as long as there isn’t important outside information that speaks against it. For example, the original description may state that the holotype is female, but the animal in question turns out to be male. The situation is then examined more closely in hopes of discovering the reason for the discrepancy, and typically the animal labeled as the holotype will continue to be accepted as such, discrepancy notwithstanding.
Taxonomists work empirically, and they want to make concrete scientific statements about concrete natural phenomena. Types are distinct objects, so it seems obvious that they should be fundamentally, tangibly available. However, this needn’t always be the case, at least according to many taxonomists. In recent years, several newly discovered vertebrates have been described whose type specimens may have been captured, measured, examined, and photographed but then intentionally released back into the wild by the authors. In 1995, for instance, the Indian astronomer Ramana Athreya was in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, in the northeastern corner of India, where he observed two brightly colored, thrush-sized birds that he couldn’t find in any field guide. Based on Athreya’s field sketches, one of his colleagues suspected the bird was Liocichla omeiensis, a species belonging to the large bird family Timaliidae. The family is sometimes referred to as Old World babblers, or simply timaliids, and Liocichla omeiensis is known colloquially as Emei Shan liocichla. As the name implies, this species comes from the area surrounding Mount Emei in southwestern China. Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, where Athreya made his bird observations, is about 1,000 kilometers away from the closest known place these birds had been seen. Athreya was skeptical and kept digging. In 2006, he managed to net one of these birds, which he’d first observed more than 10 years earlier. Athreya examined the living bird, measured and photographed it as precisely as possible, and then released it back into the wild. It was clearly a species of the Timaliidae family that was highly similar to the Emei Shan liocichla. Differences in plumage and especially in song indicated that this species evidently hadn’t yet been described. In 2006, Athreya published the formal species description in an Indian bird magazine, naming the species Liocichla bugunorum, or Bugun liocichla. The name is in reference to the local Bugun ethnic group.
Why didn’t Athreya kill the bird and preserve it permanently for future use, as most taxonomists would likely have done? Based on how few observations had been made, Athreya assumed that the entire population of the Bugun liocichla was extremely small, with maybe only three breeding pairs. Removing a grown animal from so small a population would have led to a significant weakening of the overall group, which Athreya decided against, for the preservation of the species. Additionally, the construction of a highway was planned for the area, which posed a direct threat to the survival of the species.
Where do things stand, then, with the holotype of Liocichla bugunorum, when the nomenclature rules so stringently require the explicit designation of a name-bearing individual? What’s more, species descriptions of recent—that is, currently existent—species must include a statement of intent, outlining that a primary type will be housed in a specific collection. Given the photos, Athreya had unquestionably designated a certain Bugun liocichla as the holotype, meaning that this condition within the nomenclature rules was met. What’s important here—and this can sometimes cause confusion—is that the holotype is not the photo but rather the bird pictured in the photo. Given intraspecific variability, it should be possible to recognize the photographed type in later catches of Liocichla bugunorum, even if this is no more than a theoretical possibility. But it doesn’t matter; the nomenclature rules do not fundamentally prohibit designating a holotype through a photo without the animal remaining physically available. The second condition—an explanation or at least a statement of intent regarding the holotype’s safekeeping in a collection—is problematic, however. Athreya states unambiguously that the bird in the photos is the type specimen, which—because it was freed—cannot be deposited in a collection. Several feathers left behind in the net after the catch have been properly inventoried and entered into the collection of the Bombay Natural History Society. At a different spot in his publication, Athreya writes that these feathers were gathered as type material, which is entirely possible, as the holotype of Archaeopteryx lithographica, a single feather, demonstrates. In our case here, though, Athreya had already explicitly designated the entire bird as the holotype.
Taxonomists largely agree that the nomenclature rules are not clear here and perhaps should be changed in the future. In the instance of the Bugun liocichla, it appears beyond debate that Athreya truly did detect an unknown and rather unusual bird species. Despite the minor issues with the required explanation of the type specimen’s placement in a collection, ornithologists accept his species description and species name.
As part of other species descriptions, attempts have been made to solve this problem. In 2009, the Galápagos pink land iguana Conolophus marthae was formally described. Here, too, a careful examination was performed on the living holotype, with all relevant data documented. It was then released, with one special catch. Before its release, the researchers had implanted a tracking device under the skin of one of its hind legs. Upon the holotype’s death, the team will thus be able to find its body, preserve it, and deposit it in a collection. With the explanation that the tracker will be employed to ensure that the holotype finds its way into a collection at the end of its life (at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galápagos Islands, no less), all conditions of the nomenclature rules appear to be met.
This all demonstrates that it really is possible to publish a valid species description without making the holotype available in physical form. From the perspective of sustainable taxonomy, which will be implementing as yet unforeseeable methods and potentially discovering new features in the process, it is certainly desirable to have a holotype for every published species name permanently housed in a public collection and available for general use. To risk the extinction of a rare species to accomplish this, however, is too high a price.
Figure 4.9 The holotype of Stromateus niger, a fish species described by Marcus Élieser Bloch in 1795. Today, the species belongs to the genus Parastromateus. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Homo nosce te ipsum
As just one of many animal species, our own species, Homo sapiens, was also formally described and named, meaning the zoological nomenclature rules also apply to it. Here, too, the question arises as to what the type specimen for Homo sapiens is. One could also ask “who” the type for Homo sapiens is, which highlights the fact that in asking about the type specimen for humans, it’s not just a question about a zoological object. Ultimately, it’s about a person who is slated to serve as the reference point for the name of all humanity. Quite the responsibility! When Linnaeus published Homo sapiens in 1758, he didn’t designate any individual as the type. Because the requirement to designate a name bearer was instituted in more recent years, its missing from Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae comes as no surprise. What’s more, Linnaeus probably had no intention of selecting examples of Homo sapiens, considering how little he practiced the habit with any of his other species descriptions for want of formal regulations. We are only able to verify type specimens today that belong to the names Linnaeus published because large portions of his reference collection are still intact, and one can look into what animals he had available. He doesn’t mention any of them in his descriptions.
Linnaeus describes the human species in a level of detail unusual for him: five pages of text, including a multipage footnote, cover several subspecies of humans, along with all manner of cultural features. Then, as now, the zoological identity of Homo sapiens can count as secured so that its lacking a holotype as a name bearer is painless enough to tolerate. Yet scientists always come back to the question of how this formal nomenclatural gap should be filled.
Preceding the description of Homo sapiens is a well-known aphorism: “Homo nosce te ipsum,” or “Know thyself.” These four Latin words are generally interpreted in two different ways. First, and most obvious, Linnaeus is proclaiming that humans are capable of recognizing their being through self-reflection—that is, through the examination of the self. In the context of Linnaean classification, this means that they can recognize their own position in the system of animals. Linnaeus is thus echoing a widespread call for self-awareness in humans; the Greek form of this adage, “Gnothi seauton,” has its origins in ancient Greek philosophy.
Second, some systematic biologists do not see “Homo nosce te ipsum” as a general philosophical statement, so much as they see it as an intentional reference Linnaeus is making to himself. With what we now know about Linnaeus, it cannot be ruled out that he used himself as the reference for the human species. Linnaeus was well aware of his significance in systematics, if not in science, at large. In other words, during his lifetime and beyond, Linnaeus was known for his highly cultivated ego and vanity. He wrote five autobiographies, and what he writes about himself there speaks volumes: “None have written more works, nor better, more ordered, or from personal experience”; “None were better known in all the world”; and “Not one was a greater botanist or zoologist.” In that case, why not serve directly as the reference point, the type for Homo sapiens? No convincing arguments, however, prove that the self-infatuated Linnaeus had something like this in mind. Considering that he didn’t explicitly designate types for any of the thousands of invertebrates he described, it’s highly unlikely that he would have based his description of humans—the most familiar of all species to him—on specific individuals. Therefore, most scientists who have spent time on this question agree that the description of Homo sapiens is not based on a specific individual Linnaeus selected for the job. Given these circumstances, taxonomists will ask which individuals the author did have on hand while penning his description. Every species description is based on a finite and an enumerable group of concrete individuals physically present at the time of the original description, and thus available for examination. In terms of Homo sapiens, this means that the only individuals who come into question as types are those whose features somehow found their way into the species description. In zoology, the general assumption is not that every animal known to the describer will serve as types. In most cases, taxonomists will attempt to declare all known animals in the newly discovered species as types, thus creating the largest possible type series, but it’s not required. The species describer has the license to include or exclude particular organisms at will.
Although it may seem like the nit-picking antics of overly fastidious, unworldly taxonomists to search for this type specimen—itself utterly superfluous to an understanding of human identity—it’s only consistent with today’s nomenclature rules. In the context of Linnaeus’s historic description, it must be possible, at least hypothetically, to designate people who would come into question as type specimens for Homo sapiens. Admittedly, this is more an amusing intellectual game than scientific process leading to knowledge, but the framework of modern taxonomy certainly allows for this question, and that’s also why it’s posed.
To narrow down which human individuals could be considered as types, in terms of the nomenclature rules, the search must be limited to the humans existing in 1758 and who—knowingly or unknowingly—made their way into Linnaeus’s description. “Existing in 1758” doesn’t necessarily mean living humans because the store of mortal remains available at this time also could have been mined. In any case, the human type series can’t be all of humankind—past or future, from that point in time—as sometimes discussed in the literature, because an animal that doesn’t yet exist at the time of the original description can’t yet fulfill its function as name bearer and reference object for the species description.
One could also take the stance, of course, that Linnaeus’s description of Homo sapiens represents a summary of his knowledge about the human species based on his personal experience with anatomy, society, art, and culture—that is, with every source of knowledge available to an educated scientist in the eighteenth century. As intangible as it may seem, humans as a whole—those who had lived up to 1758, whose properties merged in Linnaeus’s mind to form a collective image of humankind as a biological unit—would thus represent the type series for Homo sapiens. A notion of this sort leads to all manner of problems. It is not difficult to determine, in any case, who would have to be included in the syntype series. Linnaeus, for one; his parents and family, colleagues, and neighbors—that is, all of the humans who had influenced his perception of humans over the course of his life, whether consciously or unconsciously. His perception of Homo sapiens must also have been shaped by historical figures he’d read about or perhaps seen in paintings but never experienced in person. Direct ancestors of his own family also seem quite plausible, but what about the long-deceased kings of Sweden? Going back even further, is Aristotle—whom Linnaeus is certain to have read—a likely member of the syntype series? It’s clearly unhelpful to view as syntypes all of the humans who may have influenced Linnaeus’s notion of humans. At the least, it’s impossible to set limits on this multitude.
We don’t necessarily need to do so to take this idea further. We could tentatively limit ourselves to the people Linnaeus knew personally. If it makes any sense to construct a type series in the first place, then certainly we should draw on Linnaeus’s contemporaries. We would then have identified a whole group of people, all of whom could be name bearers as a zoological series but would conflict with the actual purpose of a name bearer. In this case, a taxonomist would select an individual from the syntype series to serve as a lectotype or the retroactively appointed name bearer. This would be possible, and it has also been done, but more on that later.
Where things stand with Linnaeus’s human type specimen can be considered from a different angle. Maybe it’s better to assume that there truly weren’t any types because neither a single type nor type series can be derived from Linnaeus’s description. Then a taxonomist could select a neotype—that is, designate an individual as the type specimen who couldn’t possibly have been part of the original type series but who now assumes the function of name bearer. As discussed earlier in extensive detail, the designation of a neotype is permitted only under strict conditions, the most important and obvious of which is this: a determination of this sort is deemed legitimate only when absolutely required to resolve a burning nomenclatural problem. This is where any attempt to designate a neotype will fail. It’s safe to say that the taxonomical identity of Homo sapiens is fairly uncontentious. We have a pretty clear picture of what characterizes our species. Another living species of the genus Homo doesn’t currently exist, and we can also assume that one won’t ever be discovered. Other species belonging to Homo have died out, and it isn’t difficult to distinguish them from Homo sapiens. Thus, there isn’t a burning nomenclatural problem with humans that can only be solved by a neotype, and for this reason neotype designations for Homo sapiens are unnecessary and invalid.
At this juncture, our old friend Edward Drinker Cope comes back into play. Cope belonged to the American Anthropometric Society, founded in 1889, which brought researchers together for the preservation and scientific study of their brains. At the end of the nineteenth century, the study of the cranium was a blossoming and tremendously popular science. Up until that time, character and mental traits of humans were not considered objectively ascertainable. Nascent evolutionary theory suggested that all organisms were linked by genealogical connections from ancestor to descendent in the “tree of life.” The passing on of traits from one generation to the next became the focal point of natural sciences. Human traits, whether physical or mental, were now no longer God-given or random attributes but the result of scientifically definable processes. This was the birth of anthropometry, whose disciples believed it possible to objectively ascertain character traits through the exact measurement of the human body, in particular the skull and brain. The desire to possess intangible criteria—for instance, for recognizing and thus predicting criminality and genius—led to a veritable flood of standardized measurement procedures in the nineteenth century. Cope, too, fell prey to the “allure of numbers,” as Stephen J. Gould termed the measuring obsession of the time, which has since come to be seen as quackery.
The skull and brain researchers didn’t only assume that race and gender could be determined by an individual’s skull; they also believed that mental capability was mirrored in anatomical features. It would follow, then, that the brain size and brain weight of the big thinkers would be significantly greater than those of the mentally less capable. In the United States, the anatomist Edward A. Spitzka urged the intellectual elite to give their brains to science after their death for a craniometrical autopsy. Spitzka was one of the five founding fathers of the American Anthropometric Society, which he linked to the pursuit of hard science as well as the belief that he was onto the “objective ascertainment” of genius—his own, included.
In 1907, Spitzka published a comprehensive work on the anatomy of eight “elite brains” he had dissected, which he then compared to the known brain measurements of such great thinkers as Georges Cuvier and Carl Friedrich Gauss. Two of the eight brains belonged to fellow founding fathers of the society, whereas the others were added later. Among them was the brain of poet Walt Whitman. A careless assistant at the society dropped the jar of alcohol containing Whitman’s brain to the floor, which damaged it so badly that not even the remains could be salvaged. Another brain Spitzka examined, finally, was Cope’s. It was in perfect condition in 1907, and it was weighed, measured, and described in detail. Fresh on the scale, it weighed 1,545 grams, which exceeded the average brain weight Spitzka expected for white males by 150 grams.4
A result Cope would assuredly have been pleased to receive. Whether it truly was Cope’s goal to posthumously become the type specimen for Homo sapiens, though, can no longer be stated with certainty. Although it has always been circulated, Jane Pierce Davidson, one of his biographers, was unable to find definitive evidence for this theory. It’s a fact, however, that he ordered his skeleton to be stored in a scientific collection to remain available to posterity. What’s also true is that after Cope’s death, his skeleton was properly inventoried, archived, and then largely forgotten. Regardless of whether this story is true, this tale of ego and eccentricity in science is too appealing and captivating for it to ever be erased from the annals of systematics. It also fits all too well with the image that Cope created for himself as one of the adversaries of the Bone Wars. The idea that Cope would want to put just one last one over Marsh after his death is so absurd that we can’t help but want to believe it.
The Ultimate Man
The story would probably have been forgotten, though, had the author, photographer, and film-maker Louis Psihoyos not come up with the idea to take a trip with Cope. Psihoyos—a multiple first-place winner of the World Press Contest—is recognized as one of the world’s most prominent and accomplished photographers. Psihoyos became known through his documentary The Cove, which details the yearly mass killings of dolphins in Japan and won the 2010 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The “encounter” with Cope came on the heels of a National Geographic report about dinosaurs, which sent Psihoyos to the world’s most important fossil digging sites alongside paleontologist John Knoebber. There, he photographed dinosaur bones, dinosaur eggs, and dinosaur tracks. The results were cover story material, and the impressive, aesthetic images sparked a lot of attention. At this point, Psihoyos had been bitten by the dinosaur bug, and the dinosaur story—which he had begrudgingly taken on at first—had become much more than a piece of contract work. Together with Knoebber, Psihoyos extended the dinosaur expedition throughout the world, and in the following months they traveled to further locations—from Patagonia to the Gobi Desert—to photograph dinosaurs and interview paleontologists. In 1994, Psihoyos’s book Hunting Dinosaurs was published, an illustrated popular science book about dinosaur discovery and discoverers.
A whole chapter of Psihoyos’s book was dedicated to the early dinosaur researchers. To illustrate Cope and Marsh’s Bone Wars, Psihoyos created a photo collage of their maps of the United States, recorded accounts, tools, and original drawings borrowed from various museums. On the search for these historical objects, Psihoyos and Knoebber were surprised to stumble across Cope. Under inventory number 4989, his skull was being kept in a plain cardboard box in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum for Archaeology and Anthropology. With his experienced eye for a special story, Psihoyos recognized that Cope’s remains would be the perfect object for his photo documentation of the Bone Wars. On a whim, he asked the curator responsible whether he could borrow Cope’s skull. Psihoyos received permission, and for the next three years, Cope’s skull accompanied Knoebber and him on a journey around the world to the most important sites of dinosaur discovery. Psihoyos staged many photos with Cope’s skull, including several with contemporary paleontologists he’d surprised with it. On one occasion in Utah, paleontologist Jim Kirkland was telling him that Cope was one of his personal heroes. “Really,” Psihoyos asked. “Would you like to meet him? He’s in the van.”5 Thus, Hunting Dinosaurs features one staged photo after the other: Cope’s skull with this or that dinosaur researcher; in the desert or someone’s yard; in a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado; with paleontologist Bob Bakker; or on Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous Ghost Ranch, which is not far from where the skeleton of Coelophysis was found. The photographic highpoint of the series is the “postmortem reunion” of the archrivals that Psihoyos staged in the Peabody Museum at Yale University.6 Two hands hold Cope’s glowing white skull before a dark oil painting of Marsh. They probably hadn’t been this close to each other since their battle began.
Psihoyos’s travels to the key sites and actors of North American dinosaur research, along with Cope—who always “seemed to be smiling, as skeletons do”7—received mixed responses from the public and colleagues in the field. No small number of people view the staging of Cope’s mortal remains in this sort of historical collage of dinosaur research irreverent—or at least questionable in taste.
Psihoyos had even bigger plans for the skull, however. He called in professional paleontologist and taxonomist Bob Bakker, who helped elucidate the meaning of type specimens in biology for the journalist, himself hardly a specialist in systematics. Psihoyos also learned from Bakker that Cope’s last will and testament had been to become the type specimen for Homo sapiens. This information inspired Psihoyos to roll out an even bigger production, namely, the presentation of Cope’s skull as the type for humankind. Above all else, Psihoyos’s texts bespeak a significant lack of specialist knowledge in this area. It’s neither correct that the description of Homo sapiens is invalid without a designated type specimen nor could Bakker and Psihoyos change Linnaeus’s published name, Homo sapiens, to “anything we wanted.”8 What is correct is that this kind of retroactive designation of a type must be published in a scientific journal to be considered valid. Psihoyos claims Bakker submitted a paper that was approved and accepted by—he implies vaguely—a “dignified but amused review board.”9 Thus, in 1994, Psihoyos asserts that almost 100 years after Cope’s death, his dying wish was finally granted, and Cope was allegedly entered into the scientific literature as the type specimen for Homo sapiens. To underscore this formal act of making Cope the “ultimate man,” Bakker crafted a fancy mahogany box, lined with red velvet, which was meant to be Cope’s future home. A brass plate on the outside of the box identifies Edward Drinker Cope as the “Type Specimen for Homo sapiens / Described by Robert T. Bakker 1993.” Typically for Psihoyos, everything was carefully arranged and photographed.
To some degree it was a publicity stunt, but the story of Cope as the human type specimen still managed to make the Wall Street Journal.10 Yet an appropriate scientific publication, in which Cope is formally designated as the lectotype for humans, was never written, let alone published. Had it been, Cope would come no closer to achieving his dying wish, the requirements for nomenclatural validity remaining eternally out of reach.
So where do things stand today regarding the nomenclatural reference point of our own species? As hard as we try to tease hints out of Linnaeus’s original Latin description, this question will continue to confound. It’s hard for taxonomists to take this lying down because the type ensures stability—clarity in the chaos, reference in the continuum. Ultimately, even taxonomists can agree that we don’t need a type specimen for the zoological nomenclature of humans. Yet taxonomists will regularly chime in about how nice and comforting it would be if we were to select someone from our ranks—or the ranks of our fathers or forefathers—and confer on them the title of name bearer. Who should be given this honor? Adam? Kings or princes? The great minds of the sciences? If one gives in to the joys of speculative thinking and takes this thought a little further, then one unavoidably comes back to one specific person: Linnaeus. In this case, the type locality would be Uppsala, Sweden, where he lived when Systema Naturae was published and when he gave up the ghost. His body still exists, even, because his mortal remains are kept in Uppsala Cathedral, where they are neatly labeled “Ossa Caroli a Linné,” or “The Bones of Carl von Linné.” Considering Linnaeus’s outsized ego, it’s easy to imagine him feeling perfectly content as the representative “wise person,” as Homo sapiens translates into English. Linnaeus can at least be counted as one of the individuals on which Homo sapiens was based, not least given that he’s the author of the name. William T. Stearn—a botanist and author of Botanical Latin, a popular book in the field—thought as much. In 1959, one year after the two hundredth anniversary of the tenth edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, which can hardly have been coincidence, Stearn published a scientific article in the renowned journal Systematic Zoology. In it, he discusses Linnaeus’s contributions to the nomenclature of organisms and his services to systematic biology. Stearn points out that it is common practice in taxonomy to select an especially good and carefully examined individual as the type, and Linnaeus should be considered for the designation. Really, if we disregard the uncontested fact that there are no objective reasons a name bearer for the human species should ever be selected, then Linnaeus would be an obvious candidate. Stearn took his own recommendation literally and unceremoniously appointed Linnaeus the lectotype of humans. As Stearn proclaimed, “This conclusion he would have regarded as satisfactory and just. As he himself said, ‘Home nosce Te ipsum.’”11
It may seem odd to take humankind—the species we know the best, the most personally, the most intimately of all organisms on earth—and treat and discuss its nomenclature in such a dry manner. It doesn’t ultimately matter whether a historically plausible name bearer exists (and is widely accepted) for Homo sapiens. Humans are just one of millions of species on earth, and we have borne our name for more than a quarter millennium. Either way, questions regarding humans as biological entities are different than those regarding an objective reference point in the naming process. Stearn—a professional botanist and systematic biologist—was unquestionably aware of this. His official and therefore formally valid designation of Linnaeus as the lectotype is thus something of a bow before Linnaeus, who established the framework for the standardized naming of organisms more than 250 years ago: a framework we may have expanded but haven’t abandoned to this day. And why not make Linnaeus the reference point for the name of our species? Are we resisting the thought of accepting this conceited eighteenth-century egomaniac as the “ultimate man”? The function of the type in biological nomenclature presents itself here once more. Selecting Linnaeus as a possible lectotype doesn’t imply he’s being honored as an exceptional human being. Instead, it simply means that Linnaeus bears the name as a representative for all other individuals of our species. Because he belongs to our species, the name would then carry over to all of us. Linnaeus would have thus fulfilled his function as a name bearer, and whether he was an organizational fanatic, genius, or egomaniac shouldn’t really matter to any other humans who don’t share the name bearer’s strange burden.
