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Summary
The Swiss naturalist and physician Leonhardt Thurneysser zum Thurn (1531–1596) travelled to Lisbon in 1555/56. During his sojourn there, as a guest of the Portuguese Royal chronicler, diplomat and humanist Damião de Góis (1502–1574), he described Portugal’s nature. The little-known manuscript of more than 300 pages contains many descriptions of plants, including herbs and trees. Thirty-two folios deal however with descriptions of fishes and other aquatic and marine animals (mammals, crustaceans and molluscs), which he probably observed at the fish market or in nature. An important part of the species is mentioned by their Portuguese names most probably collected from the fishermen and traders the author interviewed. In the present chapter these names are presented together with the respective modern scientific (binomial) and Portuguese common names, as far as it was possible to identify the animals mentioned by the author, at species level, with reasonable certainty. To our knowledge, this is the first inventory of the aquatic and marine fauna of mainland Portugal.