Cyril Alexander Walker (8 February 1939 – 6 May 2009) was a British
palaeontologist, curator of fossil birds in the
Natural History Museum. He was also interested in fossil
turtles.
["Former NHM Curator Cyril Walker Passed Away May 6 "]
, an obituary at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 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 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
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