Dataset

DMNS Marine Invertebrate Collection (Arctos)

OBIS USA Open in mapper Explore occurrences

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science Marine Invertebrate Collection dates to the early 1900s. It is a diverse collection of worldwide specimens, the largest portion being marine shells. It also has specimens of echinoderms, corals, sponges, crustaceans, and other invertebrates. Despite its name, it includes a substantial collection of land and freshwater snail shells. The collection contains nearly 50,000 lots, of which more than half are databased in Arctos with more being added to the database each week. More than half of the databased lots are geolocated, and over 1,000 specimen records have images. Specimens in the collection represent nearly 6,000 species in over 450 families. Specimens come from over 150 countries with the majority from the United States and most of those from Florida and Hawaii. All specimens have been donated to the Museum by shell collectors, including many self-collected specimens.

Citation
Denver Museum of Nature & Science Marine Invertebrate Collection
Published
August 02, 2026 at 00:09
First registration
May 25, 2022 at 09:04
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License

Contacts

Paula Cushing
Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Andrew Doll
Denver Museum of Nature & Science

David Bloom

Dusty McDonald
University of Alaska Museum

Phyllis Sharp
Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Bryan Johnson
Denver Museum of Nature & Science

42,873
total submitted occurrences
30,096
accepted occurrences
11,295
taxa
10,589
species

Taxa

Missing and invalid fields

Field Missing Invalid
basisOfRecord 1
0.0%
coordinateUncertaintyInMeters 9,015
21.0%
decimalLatitude 8,792
20.5%
decimalLongitude 8,792
20.5%
eventDate 20,980
48.9%
maximumDepthInMeters 33,794
78.8%
minimumDepthInMeters 33,794
78.8%
occurrenceStatus 42,873
100.0%
scientificNameID 891 156
2.4%

Quality flags

The OBIS data quality flags are documented at https://github.com/iobis/obis-qc.

Flag Dropped Records
NO_DEPTH 33,794
78.8%
ON_LAND 18,013
42.0%
NO_COORD 8,792
20.5%
NOT_MARINE 4,635
10.8%
DEPTH_EXCEEDS_BATH 2,915
6.8%
NO_ACCEPTED_NAME 280
0.7%
NO_MATCH 261
0.6%
MARINE_UNSURE 98
0.2%
WORMS_ANNOTATION_RESOLVABLE 1
0.0%

Measurement types

DNA derived data