Digitization of the primate collection at the Museum of Nature of the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

Abstract

The Museum of Nature of the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (MNKNU) has the largest primate collection in Ukraine, comprising 217 specimens of 59 species, including Homo sapiens. The non-human species represented in the museum comprise 11% of the total number of primates, according to the Mammal Diversity Database v2.2 (further MDD, accessed August 2025), and are distributed across four of the eight biogeographic kingdoms, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The foundation of the MNKNU’s primate collection dates back to the first quarter of the XIXth century, thus, the record for the oldest stuffed animal in the collection - a golden lion tamarin Leontopithecus rosalia (L., 1766), - dates back to 1826. The collection is represented by several types of preservation groups and includes 103 stuffed animals of 54 determined species, 87 dry, and 27 wet preparations. In the present work, we report the result of the revision of the primates collection, including taxonomical redetermination, as well as performed digitization of the part of the collection (represented by stuffed animals) accompanied by the original historical inventory data (index cards catalogue, inventory books, and printed catalogues).