The type specimens of Osteoglossum formosum
As both authors of the description of O. formosum were connected to the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in
Leiden, the location of the types must first of all be sought in the Leiden Museum. Salomon Müller, the collector of
the specimens, was a member of the Natuurkundige Commissie, a committee of persons appointed to study and
collect natural history objects in the Dutch East Indies (Fransen et al. 1997) and Hermann Schlegel at that time was
curator of Vertebrates. Müller & Schlegel (1845) do not give an exact number of specimens on which they based
their description. They state only: “The largest specimens that we have at our disposal have a length of 0.58 m, the
smallest about 0.37 m.” This means that there were at least three syntypes.