Charles Lewis Camp (March 12, 1893

Jamestown, North Dakota Jamestown is a city in Stutsman County, North Dakota, United States. It is the county seat of Stutsman County. The population was 15,849 at the 2020 census, making it the ninth largest city in North Dakota. Jamestown was founded in 1883 and is ...

– August 14, 1975

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

) was a

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

, working from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He took part in excavations at the '

Placerias ''Placerias'' (meaning 'broad body') is an extinct genus of dicynodonts that lived during the Carnian to the Norian age of the Triassic Period (230–220 million years ago). ''Placerias'' belongs to a group of dicynodonts called Kannemeyeriifor ...

Quarry', in 1930 and the forty ''

Shonisaurus ''Shonisaurus'' is a very large genus of ichthyosaur. At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the marine reptile have been found in the Luning Formation of Nevada, USA. This formation dates to the late Carnian age of the late Triassic period, ...

'' skeleton discoveries of the 1960s, in what is now the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. Camp served as the third director of the

University of California Museum of Paleontology The University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) is a paleontology museum located on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The museum is within the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB), designed by George W. Kelham and ...

from 1930 to 1949, and coincidentally as chair of the UC Berkeley Paleontology Department between 1939 and 1949. Camp named a number of species of marine reptiles such as ''

'' and ''

Plotosaurus ''Plotosaurus'' ("swimmer lizard") is an extinct genus of mosasaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Fresno County, California. Originally named ''Kolposaurus'' (meaning "bay lizard") by Berkeley paleontologist Charles Lewis Camp in 19 ...

'', as well as the dinosaur '' Segisaurus''. Camp was also an important bibliographer and historian of Western America. This aspect of his career is represented most notably by two works. The first is his biography of

American pioneer American pioneers were European American and African American settlers who migrated westward from the Thirteen Colonies and later United States to settle in and develop areas of North America that had previously been inhabited or used by Nati ...

James Clyman James Clyman (February 1, 1792 – December 27, 1881), also known as Jim Clyman, was a mountain man and an explorer and guide in the American Far West. Early life James Clyman was born on a farm that belonged to George Washington in Fauquie ...

, which Bernard De Voto called "one of the half-dozen classics in the field." The second work was the third edition of ''The Plains and the Rockies,'' published in 1953, which Camp annotated heavily. He was the 1970 recipient of the

California Historical Society The California Historical Society (CHS) is the official historical society of California. It was founded in 1871, by a group of prominent Californian intellectuals at Santa Clara University. It was officially designated as the Californian state hi ...

's Henry Raup Wagner Memorial Award. Camp was one of the early members of the revived fraternal order "

E Clampus Vitus The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus (ECV) is a fraternal organization dedicated to the preservation of the heritage of the American West, especially the history of the Mother Lode and gold mining regions of the area. There are chap ...

" and was the Noble Grand Humbug of the Yerba Buena Lodge in 1938. The

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...

Camposaurus ''Camposaurus'' ( ) is a coelophysid dinosaur genus from the Norian stage of the Late Triassic period of North America. The pertinent fossil remains date back to the early to middle Norian stage, and is widely regarded as the oldest known neot ...

'' was named in Camp's honour in 1998.

Publications

* ''California mosasaurs'' (Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1942). * ''Classification of the lizards'' (New York, NY, 1923, reprinted in 1971). Doctoratial thesis. * ''Earth song: a prologue to history'' (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1952). * ''Bibliography of fossil vertebrates 1944–1948'' (Geological Society of America, New York,1953) co-author Morton Green (1917–2003). * ''A Study of the Phytosaurs, with description of new material from Western North America'' (Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1930). * ''Methods in Paleontology'' (California, University of California Press, 1937) co-author G. Dallas Hanna (1887–1970). * * Henry R. Wagner and Charles L. Camp, ''The Plains and the Rockies: A Bibliography of Original Narratives of Travel and Adventure, 1800–1865'' (Columbus, OH: Long's College Book Co., 1953). * ''James Clyman, Frontiersman,'' (Portland, OR: Champoeg Press, 1960).

References

External links

* 1893 births 1975 deaths American paleontologists Directors of museums in the United States People from Jamestown, North Dakota 20th-century American zoologists {{Paleontologist-stub