Historical background

The first fossil fauna to be recovered from the Antarctic was collected at Seymour Island on 3 December 1892 by Captain Carl Anton Larsen and the crew of the Norwegian whaling ship Jason. Seymour Island (64°17´S, 56°45´W) lies within an archipelago at the north-east end of the Antarctic Peninsula, and the circumstances of Larsen’s discovery have been reviewed by Zinsmeister (Reference Zinsmeister, Feldmann and Woodburne1988). It is remarkable that Larsen should have stumbled upon a richly fossiliferous site that is now considered of global importance for geology, spanning as it does the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) boundary.

Also in the area at the time of Larsen’s landing were whaling/sealing ships from Dundee, Scotland, and two carried surgeon-naturalists: Charles Donald aboard Active and William Speirs Bruce aboard Balaena. The ships met, the crews fraternized and, according to Aagaard (Reference Aagaard1930, p. 84, as translated in Zinsmeister Reference Zinsmeister, Feldmann and Woodburne1988, p. 4), both Donald and Bruce were able to trade tobacco for some of the fossils collected by members of Larsen’s crew. However, their own accounts (Bruce & Donald Reference Bruce and Donald1893, Reference Bruce and Donald1896) make clear that only Donald acquired specimens, whereas Bruce was simply shown fossils by Larsen, which he recognized as Tertiary bivalves; Donald described them as ‘mostly Jurassic forms’.

Once back in Scotland, Donald passed his fossil collection (approximately nine specimens) to Professor James Geikie at the University of Edinburgh, who in turn passed them to the Geological Survey palaeontologists George Sharman and Edwin Newton. In their description of the fossils (Sharman & Newton Reference Sharman and Newton1894), they defined two new bivalve species (Cucullaea donaldi and Cytherea antarctica), tentatively identified a gastropod as Natica sp., noted the probable presence of two additional bivalve species and confirmed associated petrified wood as of coniferous type. A ‘Lower Tertiary’ (Palaeogene) age was assigned, now refined to Eocene (Zinsmeister Reference Zinsmeister1984).

Subsequently, another fossil specimen from Larsen’s 1892 collection reached Sharman and Newton via ‘Dr Murray’ - probably John Murray, the eminent Scottish-Canadian oceanographer who was based in Edinburgh at the time and who, after his involvement with the 1872–1876 Challenger expedition, was an influential advocate for Antarctic exploration (Murray Reference Murray1894). We speculate that this specimen was provided by Larsen as a duplicate from his own collection to represent a species not previously described, but precisely how Murray became involved is unknown. Sharman & Newton (Reference Sharman and Newton1899) defined this bivalve as another new species, Cyprina larseni, and presumed it to be of the same age as the ‘Lower Tertiary’ fossils described previously. It is now known, as Lahillia larseni, to range from the Upper Cretaceous to the Palaeocene (Zinsmeister & Macellari Reference Zinsmeister, Macellari, Feldmann and Woodburne1988).

Following publication, the described Seymour Island fossil collection (Larsen appears not to have arranged formal descriptions of his own specimens) drifted into obscurity. When he came to revise the Seymour Island Palaeogene fauna, Zinsmeister (Reference Zinsmeister1984) regarded the Sharman & Newton (Reference Sharman and Newton1894) holotypes as lost and instead defined neotypes. We have searched unsuccessfully for Donald’s fossils in British institutional and museum collections and must concur with Zinsmeister’s conclusion. Larsen subsequently visited Seymour Island and the vicinity on at least two other occasions, and more fossils from his various expeditions are held by the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm. One specimen from his original 1892 collection is held by the Fram Museum, Oslo.

Taxonomic review

The history of the Sharman & Newton (Reference Sharman and Newton1899) holotype of C. larseni sp. nov. is more positive. Zinsmeister & Macellari Reference Zinsmeister, Macellari, Feldmann and Woodburne1988 (pp. 276–279) confirmed it as the holotype of the revised species L. larseni (Sharman & Newton Reference Sharman and Newton1899), although they gave an erroneous date of 1897 (the paper was not read at a Royal Society of Edinburgh meeting until 7 February 1898). They did not illustrate the holotype but instead figured a ‘hypotype’ and several other specimens, all of which are housed in the United States National Museum. The holotype was listed as held by the Institute of Geological Sciences (IGS), London, with the reference number IGS 4053. However, in 1984, IGS had been renamed the British Geological Survey (BGS) and relocated, together with its collections, to Keyworth, near Nottingham. Now within the BGS collection, the L. larseni holotype has the reference number FOR 4053 (Fig. 1). It is recorded as having been presented by ‘J. Murray’. The prefix FOR identifies a specimen in the BGS’s ‘foreign collection’.

Figure 1. The holotype of Lahillia larseni (Sharman & Newton Reference Sharman and Newton1899; BGS specimen FOR 4053). British Geological Survey © UKRI 2025 (image P1074719). All rights reserved.

As L. larseni is now regarded as of Upper Cretaceous to Palaeocene age, in contrast to the Eocene assemblage described in Sharman & Newton’s Reference Sharman and Newton1894 paper, the holotype was most probably collected at a different locality on Seymour Island. Details are uncertain, but a note added to the BGS register entry for FOR 4053 citing Zinsmeister (Reference Zinsmeister, Feldmann and Woodburne1988) suggests a locality ‘just S of Cross Valley’. Irrespective, L. larseni is a common species in both Upper Cretaceous and Palaeocene strata and is of particular importance as its abundance seems to have been unaffected by the end-Cretaceous extinction. It is also a key taxon for elucidating the evolutionary history of the austral subfamily Lahilliinae, an early member of the globally important family Cardiidae (i.e. the cockles; ter Poorten Reference ter Poorten2024, p. 13). Hence, the holotype has palaeontological importance beyond its historical interest for Antarctic exploration.