“Lost” and rediscovered: Holotype of palaeobatrachus diluvianus (Goldfuss, 1831)

Abstract

A brief history and notes on the significance of the holotype specimen of Palaeobatrachus diluvianus (GOLDFUSS, 1831) are presented, together with a detailed description and illustrations. The specimen was seemingly lost during WW2, but this was caused by the fact that whereas all specimens in the repository of the Goldfuss Museum were catalogued during the 1970s, the holotype was included in a public exhibition of the Museum and thus escaped the catalogization. The specimen is a natural cast of a nearly complete articulated skeleton in the sediment exposed in the dorsal aspect, in which only the distal sections of the hindlimbs were not preserved. Although the original Goldfuss’ illustration of the specimen is largely idealized, the original illustration by Meyer (1860) is fairly precise, so the identity of the specimen is beyond doubt. It bears most of diagnostic characters of the genus Palaeobatrachus and some additional ones (such as a big skull, contrasting with the comparatively short vertebral column) that can be taken as diagnostic for the species. This makes this specimen a reasonable starting point for all future comparative analyses.