#also i didnt think it might have been 1800s because the oldest speciman i found before this was 1905 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

narwhalsarefalling · 3 months

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todays herbarium story: new fucking way of dating things to confuse future archivists. someone wrote 66-1-3 as the date on a specimen. obviously i assumed 66 was the year and either the day was January 3rd or March 1st. put “1966” for the year in the file, marked as needing confirmation.

anyway one of the historical archivists went back and used the guys name to figure out about what month he confirmed it? and it was fucking 1866. the guy who cataloged it died in 1920.

i inadvertently handled a specimen thats older literally everyone i know and love and my only thought was mild irritation because it was dated weird.

we still dont know if it was found in January or March.

#the narwhal speaks #unfortunately i do not have a photo of it #i didnt think it was that old because someone had cut the speciman out and pasted it onto slightly newer paper #so it looked like it was still ‘old’ enough to be from 1966 #anyway. pissing myself with laughter #i think this is the oldest specimen we have in the herbarium and it has the most galaxy brain take of writing dates #stardate 66-1-3 today i fucking found a cool leucophyllum frutescens #also i didnt think it might have been 1800s because the oldest speciman i found before this was 1905

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