Museum Specimen Data for Australian Sea Snake Taxonomic Reassignment

James Nankivell's supplementary data supports a taxonomic reassignment of Australian sea snakes. The dataset includes morphological data from 51 examined museum specimens and collated data from 55 published individuals. It was last updated on May 12, 2026, and is licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Use Cases

• Training species identification models based on morphological characters like maxillary tooth count and scale rows.
• Analyzing patterns of morphological convergence in Hydrophis sea snakes using the described traits.
• Mapping the revised geographic distribution of Hydrophis donaldi based on specimen location data.

Strengths

• Includes data from 106 total specimens (51 examined, 55 from literature).
• Focuses on resolving a specific taxonomic uncertainty with clear diagnostic characters.
• Data is openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0 for reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by James Nankivell.

Collection Method

Examination of museum specimens and collation of published morphological data.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 05:57:53; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Primarily the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, with one record from southern New Guinea.