Museum of Paleontology Invertebrate Database

[Jim Beach]

     A general announcement to the Biological Community!

     The Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley
     is now making available through Gopher all the type specimens for
     invertebrates.  The catalog has been WAISindexed, meaning that
     you may search on any word in the database.  To use the index or
     to look at the full catalog (which is a very large file and will take
     lots of time to retrieve), point your gopher at "ucmp1.berkeley.edu".
     You may also get there by going to the UMinn Mother of all Gophers and
     choosing North America, USA then California then University of
     California - Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology. If you can display
     images through gopher, we also have a nice exhibit of white sharks
     taken from hand held camera and converted to GIF images.
     The Museum Invertebrate Type Specimen catalog contains taxonomic,
     locality and citation information.  Searches return hits in order of
     decreasing utility, so the hits closest to your search are the first
     ones listed on gopher, and the hits further from your search are listed
     last.

     Any comments about the database or questions concerning
     Museum specimens can be either sent to my email address, or (if you
     want to get fancy) may be sent through the Museum Information Request
     Form on the Museum Gopher.  You will need to be able to do "telnet"
     through gopher to use the request form.  Thanks.


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Robert P. Guralnick                          |"James, all I want are some
Museum of Paleontology Systems Administrator |horses, a nice stream with some
Berkeley, CA (robg at ucmp1.berkeley.edu)       |fishies and a cold
                                             |place to die"
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