paratype

thumb|230px|Paratype of Lepidothrix vilasboasi (Sick, 1959) in [[Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin]] thumb|230px|Paratype of Cadurcotherium nouleti – MHNT

In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Often there is more than one paratype. Paratypes are usually held in museum research collections.