Richard Lydekker (; 25 July 1849 – 16 April 1915) was an English naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books on natural history.

Biography

Richard Lydekker was born at

Tavistock Square Tavistock Square is a public square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. History Tavistock Square was built shortly after 1806 by the property developer James Burton and the master builder Thomas Cubitt for Francis Russell, 5th Duke ...

in London. His father was Gerard Wolfe Lydekker, a barrister-at-law with Dutch ancestry. The family moved to Harpenden Lodge soon after Richard's birth. He was educated at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

, where he took a first-class in the Natural Science

tripos At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mathe ...

(1872). In 1874 he joined the

Geological Survey of India The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is a scientific agency of India. It was founded in 1851, as a Government of India organization under the Ministry of Mines, one of the oldest of such organisations in the world and the second oldest survey ...

and made studies of the

vertebrate palaeontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by u ...

of northern India (especially

Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...

). He remained in this post until the death of his father in 1881. His main work in India was on the Siwalik palaeofauna; it was published in ''Palaeontologia Indica''. He was responsible for the cataloguing of the

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 ...

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s, reptiles, and 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. ...

(10 vols., 1891). He named a variety of taxa including the

golden-bellied mangabey The golden-bellied mangabey (''Cercocebus chrysogaster'') is a social Old World monkey found in swampy, humid forests south of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was previously considered a subspecies of the agile manga ...

; as a taxon authority he is named simply as "Lydekker".

Biogeography

He was influential in the science of

biogeography Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...

. In 1895 he delineated the biogeographical boundary through

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, known as Lydekker's Line, that separates

Wallacea Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as ...

on the west from

Australia-New Guinea The continent of Australia, sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul (), Australia-New Guinea, Australinea, Meganesia, or Papualand to distinguish it from the country of Australia, is located within the Southern and East ...

on the east. It follows the edge of the

Sahul Shelf Geologically, the Sahul Shelf () is a part of the continental shelf of the Australian continent, lying off the northwest coast of mainland Australia. Etymology The name "Sahull" or "Sahoel" appeared on 17th century Dutch maps applied to a ...

, an area from New Guinea to Australia of shallow water with the

Aru Islands The Aru Islands Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru) is a group of about 95 low-lying islands in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It also forms a regency of Maluku Province, with a land area of . At the 2011 Census the Regency had a po ...

on its edge. Along with

Wallace's Line The Wallace Line or Wallace's Line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a tr ...

and Huxley's Line it indicates the definite effect of geology on the biogeography of the region, something not seen so clearly in other parts of the world.

First cuckoo

Lydekker attracted amused public attention with a pair of letters to ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' in 1913, when he wrote on 6 February that he had heard a

cuckoo Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separ ...

, contrary to Yarrell's ''

History of British Birds ''A History of British Birds'' is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, ''Land Birds'', appeared in 1797. Volume 2, ''Water Birds'', appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in ''Lan ...

'' which doubted the bird arrived before April. Six days later on 12 February 1913, he wrote again, confessing that "the note was uttered by a bricklayer's labourer". Letters about the first cuckoo became a tradition in the newspaper.

Awards

He received the

Lyell Medal The Lyell Medal is a prestigious annual scientific medal given by the Geological Society of London, equal in status to the Murchison Medal. This medal is awarded based on one Earth Scientist's exceptional contribution of research to the scientific ...

from the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

in 1902.

Works

*
Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the British Museum (Natural History)
', 5 vols. (1885–1887) *
Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum (Natural History)
', 4 vols. (1889) * ''A Manual of Palaeontology'' (with

Henry Alleyne Nicholson Henry Alleyne Nicholson FRS FRSE FGS FLS (11 September 1844 – 19 January 1899) was a British palaeontologist and zoologist. Life The son of John Nicholson (1809–1886), a biblical scholar, and his wife Annie Elizabeth Waring, he was born ...

, 2 vols., 1889)
''Catalogue of the Fossil Birds in the British Museum (Natural History)''
(1891) * ''Phases of Animal Life'' (1892) * ''The Royal Natural History'' (with W. H. Flower), 6 vols., 12 sec. (1893–1896) * ''A Hand-book to the Marsupialia and Monotremata'' (1894) * ''Life and Rock: A Collection of Zooogical and Geological Essays'' (1894) * ''A Geographical History of Mammals'' (1896) * ''A Hand-book to the British Mammalia'' (1896) * ''A Handbook to the Carnivora : part 1 : cats, civets, and mongooses'' (1896) * ''The Deer of all Lands : A history of the family Cervidae, living and extinct'' (1898) * ''Wild Oxen, Sheep & Goats of all Lands, Living and Extinct'' (1898) * ''The Wild Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet'' (1900) * ''The great and small game of Europe, western & northern Asia and America'' (1901) * ''The New Natural History'' 6 vols. (1901) * ''Living Races of Mankind: A popular illustrated account of the customs, habits, pursuits, feasts, and ceremonies of the races of mankind throughout the world'', 2 vols. (1902), with Henry Neville Hutchinson and

John Walter Gregory John Walter Gregory, , (27 January 1864 – 2 June 1932) was a British geologist and explorer, known principally for his work on glacial geology and on the geography and geology of Australia and East Africa. The Gregory Rift in the Great Rift ...

* ''Mostly Mammals: Zoological Essays'' (1903) * ''Guide to the Gallery of Reptilia and Amphibia in the British museum'' (1906)
''Sir William Flower''
(1906) * ''The Game Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet'' (rev. ed.) (1907) * ''Guide to the Great Game Animals (Ungulata) in British Museum'' (1907) * ''Guide to the Specimens of the Horse Family (Equidæ) in British Museum'' (1907) * ''The Game Animals of Africa'' (1908) * ''A Guide to the Domesticated Animals (other than horses)'' (1908) * ''Guide to the Whales, Porpoises, and Dolphins (order Cetacea)'' (1909) *
number of articles
in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 1911 * ''Animal Portraiture'' (1912) * ''The Horse and its Relatives'' (1912) * ''The Sheep and its Cousins'' (1912) * ''Catalogue of the heads and horns of Indian big game bequeathed by A. O. Hume ... to the British Museum (Natural History)'' (1913) * ''Catalogue of the ungulate mammals in the British Museum (Natural History)'' 5 vols. (1913–1916) * ''Wild life of the World : a descriptive survey of the geographical distribution of animals'' 3 vols. (1916)

Notes

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lydekker, Richard 1849 births 1915 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Biogeographers Employees of the Natural History Museum, London L English geologists English zoologists Fellows of the Royal Society Lyell Medal winners Naturalists Zoologists with author abbreviations