Starfish (Asteroidea)
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of about 550 starfish (Asteroidea) plus a number of related models. These date from 1870 to 2007.
The collection includes around 450 dried specimens, 80 specimens preserved in spirit and several glass models by Blaschka of Dresden. Most of the dried starfish are from British seas, although there are also some impressive tropical specimens. The starfish in spirit were collected from the late 1800s onwards, mainly from Scottish coastal waters. Some of these were collected in the mid-1970s by Dr Dietrich L. Burkel, the Deputy Keeper of Natural History at Kelvingrove Museum, on the research vessels RRS Challenger and Walther Herwig. Others were collected on scuba diving trips around the coast of Scotland. The glass models show the development and embryology of starfish.
About starfish
Starfish are a class of echinoderms (marine invertebrates) and most of them are predators with five arms. There are approximately 1,900 species, and they are a very abundant group of animals in all the world’s oceans. - Broader term
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