museum specimen

Some of the best scientific discoveries are not made in the field or the lab, but in the dusty corners of a museum. Bernhard L. Bock, a curator at the Institute for Zoology and Evolutionary Research & Phyletisches Museum at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, has done just that. His study, published open access in Natural History Collections and Museomics (NHCM), describes the rediscovery of a type specimen of the polyclad flatworm Plehnia arctica, presumed lost for more than a century.

A jar nobody was looking for

The specimen was collected in July 1889 during Wilhelm Kükenthal and Alfred Walter’s Arctic expedition to Spitsbergen. The trip nearly ended in disaster when their ship was crushed by pack ice in June, but the crew was rescued four days later and carried on. The flatworms were handed to the zoologist Arnold Lang, who passed them to his talented student, Marianne Plehn. She described the species in 1896 as Acelis arctica, and the genus was later renamed Plehnia in her honour.

As was common in the nineteenth century, no one recorded where the type specimens were kept afterwards, and they simply vanished from the record. The Jena specimen resurfaced when previously forgotten collection material was reorganised, and Bock found a small ground-stopper jar holding an almost dried-out polyclad, with just a little liquid keeping it from drying out completely. Its original label, handwritten by Ernst Haeckel, was still attached. An entry in Haeckel’s own ledger from 1896 confirmed the link to Plehn’s work.

The cabinet where the type specimen was found. Photo credit: Bernhard Bock.

Detective work

Of the three specimens Plehn originally examined, only this one is known to survive. Bock wrote to institutions across Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Switzerland and Norway in search of the others, without luck. He then carefully rehoused the specimen in 70% ethanol, conserved its fragile label and photographed it in high resolution for the first time. The worm is around 55 mm long and 36 mm wide, and, just as Plehn reported, it has no eyes.

The type specimen, preserved in the original glass it was stored. Photo credit: Bernhard Bock.

Who was Marianne Plehn?

Bock is keen that the story does not stop at the specimen. Plehn, he explains, is best known for co-founding fish pathology alongside Bruno Hofer:

“She helped lay the foundational framework for fish pathology and treatment. She described and classified various freshwater fish diseases.”

Her research covered parasitic and environmental diseases, including liver and metabolic disorders in salmonids and bacterial infections in commercial fisheries. In 1924 she published the Praktikum der Fischkrankheiten, which “became a standard diagnostic and teaching handbook for zoologists, veterinarians or fisheries managers across Europe for a long time”.

Her path was far from easy. Women in Germany were excluded from higher education until the early 1900s, and were permitted only as “guest listeners” who could not earn degrees. Plehn had to leave the country to study in Zurich, where she became the first woman to receive a doctorate from ETH Zurich. In 1913 she was named Königlicher Professor, the first woman in Bavaria to receive the title.

As Bock notes:

“This represents a historic milestone for women in higher education and natural sciences in Germany – despite no linked teaching certificate to the appointment. Her extensive field research and diagnostic expertise earned her widespread recognition as one of Europe’s top authorities in aquatic biology.”

Marianne Plehn at her desk, photographed by Philipp Kester. Philipp Kester, Marianne Plehn – Aufnahme am Arbeitstisch, 17 cm × 12 cm, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv Kester https://sammlungonline.muenchner-stadtmuseum.de/objekt/marianne-plehn-aufnahme-am-arbeitstisch-10113833.

Why it matters for future research

For Bock, the find carries several hopes. The first is a change in attitude towards neglected collections:

“I made the experience first-hand that the decision of getting rid of something is made quite fast, without having a closer look or starting to sleuth the provenance of certain objects, as this is a very time-consuming and often dead-end job, but sometimes there are astonishing reveals!”

The second is about storytelling. “I want to tell stories, to scholars, students and visitors,” he says. Knowing who collected a specimen, and how, makes an object attractive in a way that a label never could, because “there is more to tell than just a greyish marine flatworm”.

The third is scientific. The relationships of the family Plehniidae within the polyclads remain unclear, and no earlier phylogenetic study has included P. arctica. Bock hopes the specimen might one day yield DNA sequences, making it useful for phylogenetic and systematic research.

A call for more curators

Finally, Bock sees his article as a plea for investment in people as well as in specimens: small museums, he argues, need more curator positions, not only for vertebrates but for other groups too.

“There is so much to discover that is already there, but we lack manpower.”

Asked what he finds most interesting about the work, Bock says it is the discovery itself and its provenance, “as this enriches our collection”. Others, he suggests, may be drawn to the news that a type specimen is available again, or to Plehn’s career path. Whichever it is, a grey flatworm in a small jar has proved to be a window onto a pioneering scientist and a reminder of how much may still be waiting on the shelves.

Original source:

Bock BL (2026) Rediscovery of a type specimen of Plehnia arctica (Plehn, 1896) (Polycladida, Plehniidae) described by Marianne Plehn, a pioneering woman in German zoology. Natural History Collections and Museomics 3: e200580. https://doi.org/10.3897/nhcm.3.200580

Natural History Collections and Museomics: Facebook and Bluesky

Researchers have created a detailed, animated 3D model of the Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis), a spectacular bird that has not been confirmed in the wild since 1956. The model, built from a museum specimen and the only known film footage of the living bird, is freely available to scientists, educators and the public.

The study, led by Joshua Medina at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is published in the open-access journal Natural History Collections and Museomics (NHCM). The research team also includes colleagues from the Moore Laboratory of Zoology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Oregon State University.

3D model of an Imperial Woodpecker mid-flight with wings extended. The left wing (A) has been labelled and colour-coded according to feather type present in the model. The right wing (B) exposes the underlying 3D armature that drives the motion and articulation of the wing. Image credit: Joshua Medina et al., 2026.

The Imperial Woodpecker was the largest woodpecker on record, reaching more than 60 centimetres in length. It lived in the old-growth pine forests of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental and is presumed extinct following widespread logging of its habitat. Around 100 preserved specimens exist in museums worldwide, and the only moving images of the species are a few seconds of grainy film shot in 1956.

“The Imperial Woodpecker hasn’t been seen in the wild for nearly 70 years. Creating a digital specimen let us re-capture a glimpse of the bird’s real likeness and behaviour in a way that’s easy to access and share.”
The Research Team

From museum skin to moving bird

The reconstruction began with a female specimen held at the Moore Laboratory of Zoology, which houses the world’s largest collection of Mexican birds. The team photographed the specimen 288 times from every angle and used photogrammetry, a technique that turns overlapping photographs into a 3D surface, to capture its shape with sub-millimetre accuracy. Measurements of the head, bill, body, wings and tail were taken throughout to keep the digital bird true to the original.

3D model of an Imperial Woodpecker ascending a tree. The model is shown fully rendered with colour derived from 3D specimen scans and photographs (A), with the underlying mesh exposed in the image to the right (B). Below, still frames of a live female Imperial Woodpecker in the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico show the bird climbing (C) and mid-flight (D). Video frames reproduced from Lammertink et al. (2011, fig. 1). Image credit: Joshua Medina et al., 2026.

Feathers proved the greatest challenge. Because it is difficult to see individual feathers on a specimen, the team modelled individual feather shapes on those of the Pileated Woodpecker, the largest living woodpecker in North America, then resized and adjusted them to match the known proportions of the Imperial Woodpecker. Wing patterning was drawn from scientific illustrations and checked against the available visual record.

Wing-tip displacement over the course of the animation sequence, tracked from the tip of the terminal phalanx. Graphs show displacement in the mediolateral (x) axis, the dorsoventral (y) axis and the anteroposterior (z) axis, each measured in metres, plotted against animation frame number. Peaks and troughs in each axis correspond to discrete wingbeat cycles, with intervening plateaus reflecting periods of soaring where wing-tip movement is minimal. Image credit: Joshua Medina et al., 2026.

Using the open-source software Blender, the researchers then built a digital skeleton to drive the model’s movement. Ten primary, ten secondary and twelve tail feathers were each individually modelled and rigged, so that they can spread, bend and fold independently. To the team’s knowledge, this makes the model one of the first open, specimen-based bird reconstructions to combine a photogrammetric body with individually animated feathers.

Two animations bring the model to life: a looping flight sequence and a short clip of the bird climbing a tree trunk and drumming against the bark. Both are grounded in the 1956 film footage, supplemented by behavioural video of the Pileated Woodpecker and published data on woodpecker wingbeat timing.

Four phases of the wingbeat cycle of C. *imperialis*, shown in dorsal view (A) and lateral view (B). Beginning with the wings fully extended at the top of the upstroke (1), the wingtips sweep downward through the downstroke to their lowermost point (2), before the wings fold and draw back towards the body (3) and finally extend again as they rise to complete the upstroke (4). Image credit: Joshua Medina et al., 2026.

A tool for science and for public awareness

Beyond its visual appeal, the model is designed as a reproducible scientific resource. Researchers can use it to estimate body volume and surface area, compare shape with living relatives, or run simulations of flight and feather movement. The authors note it could also inform the design of bird-inspired flying robots.

The team hopes the work will also reach audiences far beyond the laboratory:

“The Imperial Woodpecker might be the last bird species to have gone extinct in continental North America, but arguably 99.9% of people have never heard of it.

If a digital specimen can increase public awareness of extinct species by even a fraction of a percent, that’s millions of people who have an idea for what extinction can erase from the planet.”

Russell Campbell measuring the Imperial Woodpecker specimen. Image credit: Joshua Medina.

The study also highlights the cultural dimension of the species. The Imperial Woodpecker features in the traditions of Indigenous communities of the Sierra Madre Occidental, yet few, if any, museum specimens are held in Mexico. The authors suggest that freely shared digital models may help to offset these geographic and institutional barriers, while acknowledging that whether such work can contribute to the repatriation of biological and cultural heritage remains an open question.

Imperial Woodpecker 3D Model.

The researchers are candid about the model’s limits. It is based on a single female specimen, and aspects such as soft tissue and flight kinematics rely on informed estimation from living relatives. They hope future work will digitise further specimens to capture variation between sexes and individuals.

“The fact that this was created by such a small team will hopefully be a proof of concept that results in more museum specimens being brought to life and shared with the larger scientific community.”

The model, skeleton and animations are available to view and download through Sketchfab.

Original source

Medina J, Campbell R, Martin J, McCormack JE, Irschick DJ (2026) A digital specimen of the extinct Imperial Woodpecker: integrating museum scans, historical film and animated feather articulation. Natural History Collections and Museomics 3: e204314. https://doi.org/10.3897/nhcm.3.204314

Natural History Collections and Museomics: Facebook and Bluesky

Tag: museum specimen

Honouring a Pioneer: The Return of Marianne Plehn’s Type Specimen

Imperial Woodpecker returns to life as a detailed digital specimen