South Australian Museum BANZARE Expedition - Mixed specimens

For weDigBio 2015 the South Australian Museum is conducting a blitz on specimens from the historic British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions (or BANZARE). These expeditions were led by Sir Douglas Mawson and took place over the summers of 1929-30 and 1930-31, on board the ship Discovery, traversing the Antarctic coastline from 45°E to 160°E and defining what would become the Australian Antarctic Territory.

These expeditions conducted significant scientific work and observations and collected tonnes of zoological specimens. The South Australian Museum’s marine invertebrates collection includes many BANZARE specimens, including this mixed group of specimens. In this expedition you’ll find collections of cephalopod or squid beaks, often collected from the gizzards of birds and marine mammals, and beautiful slender-armed brittle stars. Brittle stars, or ophiuroids, have no eyes, but have special nerve endings in their skin that can sense chemicals in the water, touch and the presence or absence of light.  The total number of tasks for this dataset is: 280, number transcribed is 280 and number validated is 0.