Birds and Mammals Collections of the Zoological Museum of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University

The dataset contains information about Birds and Mammals collections stored in the Zoological Museum of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. In total, these collections include about 220K mammal and 150K bird specimens. A part of its catalogues is available in an electronic form on the museum website (http://zmmu.msu.ru/dbs/search_start.php; type specimen) and on the online portal of the National Depository Bank of Live Systems (http://animal.depo.msu.ru). In the course of the project ”Supporting data mobilization activities in Russia west of Ural mountains”, funded by the GBIF Secretariat (project code “Russia-01”), the work on digitizing the paper catalogues was continued. The data transformed into an electronic form was published on the GBIF web portal. The dataset includes main information from catalogue cards (species, sex, age, preparation form etc.) as well as coordinates of disposal site (their precision depends on the detail of geographic data provided by collectors). The major part of the data represents the European part of Russian Federation; areas covered also include Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, Germany, Moldova, and Republic of Latvia. Note that the precision of coordinates may vary depending on the completeness of the geographical data provided by collectors. Usually, the closest settlement or other geographic feature was reported, so the precision of georeferencing is no more than several kilometres, and can be even less if only administrative region or country was provided.