Cyril Alexander Walker (8 February 1939 – 6 May 2009) was a British

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 ...

, curator of fossil birds in the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

. He was also interested in fossil

turtle Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked tu ...

s."Former NHM Curator Cyril Walker Passed Away May 6 "
, an obituary at the

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is a professional organization that was founded in the United States in 1940 to advance the science of vertebrate paleontology around the world. Mission and Activities SVP has about 2,300 members inter ...

website Walker joined the Museum in 1958 and spent his entire career there, becoming curator in 1985. Walker's most noteworthy finding was his recognition of a new subclass of fossils birds, the

Enantiornithes The Enantiornithes, also known as enantiornithines or enantiornitheans in literature, are a group of extinct avialans ("birds" in the broad sense), the most abundant and diverse group known from the Mesozoic era. Almost all retained teeth and cla ...

. Together with David Ward, he co-authored a best selling"Megalodon: Hunting the Hunter", by Mark Renz
p. viii
/ref> book, '' Smithsonian Handbook of Fossils''. He has also contributed to many other books, including ''Garden Birds'', ''Field Guide to British Birds'', ''Birds of the World'', ''Nature Notebooks'', and others. An unidentified moa bone of unknown origin and locality, donated by Dr. C. Walker to ornithologist

Zlatozar Boev Zlatozar Boev (born 20 October 1955) is a Bulgarian ornithologist, paleontologist, and zoologist. He has published 345 papers and other material, in Bulgarian, English, French, and Russian. He has classified 36 taxa. Boev is a part of the Nationa ...

in 1986, was later identified as the little bush moa (''Anomalopteryx didiformis'').1. Boev, Z. 2018. A specimen of little bush moa Anomalopteryx didiformis (Owen, 1844), Emeidae Bonaparte, 1854 from the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia. – Historia naturalis bulgarica, 32: 3-5. It is the only specimen of Dinornithiformes in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.

References

British palaeontologists British writers 1939 births 2009 deaths Place of birth missing {{UK-scientist-stub