Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British
paleontologist
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 ...
.
Early life
Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his father was declared bankrupt, Seeley was sent to live with a family of piano makers. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, he went to a day school and then spent the next two years learning to make pianos. He also attended lectures at the Royal School of Mines by
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stori ...
,
Edward Forbes
Edward Forbes FRS, FGS (12 February 1815 – 18 November 1854) was a Manx naturalist. In 1846, he proposed that the distributions of montane plants and animals had been compressed downslope, and some oceanic islands connected to the mainlan ...
, and other notable scientists. In 1855, with the support of his uncle, Seeley began to study law but shortly gave it up to pursue a career as an actuary. In the late 1850s, he studied English and mathematics at the
Working Men's College and served as a secretary for the college's museum. He also worked in the library of the British Museum, where
Samuel Pickworth Woodward encouraged him to study geology.
In 1859, Seeley began studies at
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and worked as an assistant for Adam Sedgwick at the
Woodwardian Museum
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, is the geology museum of the University of Cambridge. It is part of the Department of Earth Sciences and is located on the university's Downing Site in Downing Street, central Cambridge, England. The Sedgw ...
. He helped curate the museum's fossil collection and began field studies on the local geology. Seeley graduated from Sidney Sussex College in 1863 and joined
St John's in 1868 but never took a degree.
He turned down positions both with the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
and the
Geological Survey
A geological survey is the systematic investigation of the geology beneath a given piece of ground for the purpose of creating a geological map or model. Geological surveying employs techniques from the traditional walk-over survey, studying outc ...
of Britain to work on his own. Late in his career he accepted a position as Professor of Geology at
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
and
Bedford College (London)
Bedford College was in York Place after 1874
Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London. Having played a lead ...
(1876). He was later Lecturer on Geology and Physiology at
Dulwich College
Dulwich College is a 2–19 Independent school (United Kingdom), independent, Day school, day and boarding school for Single-sex education, boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a Public school (United Kingdom), public school, it began as the Col ...
and Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at
King's College London (1896–1905).
He died in Kensington, London and was buried in
Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the Regi ...
. He had married in 1872 Eleanora Jane, daughter of William Mitchell of Bath. Their daughter Maude married
Arthur Smith Woodward
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, FRS (23 May 1864 – 2 September 1944) was an English palaeontologist, known as a world expert in fossil fish. He also described the Piltdown Man fossils, which were later determined to be fraudulent. He is not relate ...
, FRS.
Dinosaurs
Seeley determined that
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s fell into two great groups, the
Saurischia
Saurischia ( , meaning "reptile-hipped" from the Greek ' () meaning 'lizard' and ' () meaning 'hip joint') is one of the two basic divisions of dinosaurs (the other being Ornithischia), classified by their hip structure. Saurischia and Ornithis ...
and the
Ornithischia, based on the nature of their
pelvic bones and joints. He published his results in 1888, from a lecture he had delivered the previous year. Paleontologists of his time had been dividing the
Dinosauria in various ways, depending on the structure of their feet and the form of their teeth. Seeley's division, however, has stood the test of time, though the birds have subsequently been found to descend, not from the "bird-hipped" Ornithischia, but from the "lizard-hipped" Saurischia. He found the two groups so distinct that he also argued for separate origins: not until the 1980s did new techniques of
cladistic analysis
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived chara ...
show that both groups of dinosaurs really did have common ancestors in the
Triassic
The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Year#Abbreviations yr and ya, Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 ...
. Seeley described and named numerous dinosaurs from their
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s in the course of his career.
His popular book on
pterosaur
Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 ...
s, ''Dragons of the Air'' (1901), found that the development of birds and pterosaurs paralleled each other. His belief that they had a common origin has been proved, for both are archosaurs, just not as close as he thought. He upset
Richard Owen's characterization of the pterosaurs as cold-blooded, sluggish gliders, and recognized them as warm-blooded active fliers.
He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...
in June 1879 for his work on reptiles and dinosaurs,
and delivered their
Croonian Lecture
The Croonian Medal and Lecture is a prestigious award, a medal, and lecture given at the invitation of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians.
Among the papers of William Croone at his death in 1684, was a plan to endow a single ...
in 1887.
- see
Alfred Brown
Publications
* The Ornithosauria (1870)
* Factors in Life: Three Lectures on Health, Food, Education (1884)
* Manual of Geology: Theoretical and Practical (1885)
* The Freshwater Fishes Of Europe: A History Of Their Genera, Species, Structure, Habits And Distribution (1886)
* The Story of the Earth in Past Ages (1895)
Dragons of the air : an account of extinct flying reptiles(1901)
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
''Dragons of the Air''(1901) at
HathiTrust
*
Michon Scott, "Harry Govier Seeley"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeley, Harry Govier
British palaeontologists
1839 births
1909 deaths
Academics of King's College London
Fellows of the Royal Society
Lyell Medal winners
Scientists from London
Burials at Brookwood Cemetery