Side events

Excursions 

There will be no organized excursion for all participants but you will find some proposals for possible excursions in the following links:

https://www.pariscityvision.com

Collection visits

1. For fun

Visits to 4 different collections are possible: the collections of the Sorbonne University (Zoology collection, Geosciences collection) and the MNHN collections (Crustacean typotheque, Extant crustacean collection) will be organized upon registration by the curators in charge of the collection unit concerned.

In Sorbonne University    

 

Zoology collection

Heir to the former zoological collection of the Sorbonne, this is an important collection of objects for educational purposes: fluid specimens, naturalisations, skeletons, anatomical montages, etc. It includes historical pieces, such as an elephant skull from the cabinet of Georges Cuvier, and remarkable sets such as the Frič collection of comparative anatomy (late 19th century). 

Visit hosted by Santiago Aragon

 

 

 

In MNHN

Extant Crustacean Collection

The Crustacean collection of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle gathers all decapods and non-decapods as well as Pycnogonids and Horseshoe crabs. Composed of more than 160,000 inventoried lots, and about 15,500 types, this collection is considered as one of the richest Museum collections, most notable by the species diversity as well as the geographic coverage.  It is the largest collection of deep-sea decapod crustaceans from the Indo-Pacific zone. 

The collection includes marine, freshwater, and terrestrial crustaceans (including parasitic species) from all over the world. The specimens, measuring from less than 1 mm to more than 2 m in width, are mainly preserved in alcohol. Some are naturalized and dry-preserved (historical collections, such as the Brachuyra Collection), others are preserved in preparations on slides. Since 2008, tissue and DNA collection has also been set up. 

Historically, the core of the collection started before 1800 with the harvests of the naturalist travellers (voyages of Bougainville, Savigny, Dumont d'Urville...) and continued afterwards, notably with those of the expeditions of the “Travailleur'' and the “Talisman”. The collection has benefited from the work of famous carcinologists such as Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, P.-A. Latreille, H. and A. Milne-Edwards, E. Chevreux. A considerable expansion of the collection is due to the Musorstom and Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos expeditions, which began in the late 1970s and are still ongoing today. 

The crustacean collection is housed in two different locations at MNHN. The type material is stored in the Typotheque, and the General collection of extant Crustacea is stored in the Zootheque.

https://www.mnhn.fr/en/collections/collection-groups/marine-invertebrates/decapod-and-non-decapod-crustaceans

 

Palaeontological Collection

The collection of fossil marine arthropods at the Muséum contains specimens from all over the world. Many extant and extinct groups are represented: trilobites, eurypterids, pycnogonids, limulids and crustaceans (crabs, shrimps and lobsters).

The collection of fossil marine arthropods is very old and is composed of several palaeontological collections corresponding to a wide variety of classification systems: by locality, by age or by systematics.

The following ones are stored at the Muséum:

• Large historical collections gathered by prestigious naturalists (e.g. Faujas de Saint Fond, Brongniart, Desmarest, d’Orbigny, Milne Edwards);

• Stratigraphic collections (e.g. Jurassic of France);

• Specialised collections relating to consistent taxonomic groups (e.g. crabs of the Desmarest’s collection);

• Geographical collections (e.g. fossil crustaceans from Madagascar).

The collection contains about 20,000 specimens of fossil marine arthropods including 6,000 trilobites, 2,000 decapod crustaceans and 300 thylacocephalans (enigmatic arthropods that became extinct in the Cretaceous). Over 2,100 type and figured specimens have now been listed.

https://www.mnhn.fr/en/fossil-marine-arthropod-collection