Richard Hall Tedford (April 25, 1929 – July 15, 2011) was Curator

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology of the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

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, having been named as curator in 1969.Staff
"14 ARE APPOINTED AT MUSEUM HERE"
''

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'', August 13, 1969. Accessed July 22, 2011. Born in

Encino, California Encino (Spanish language, Spanish for "oak") is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. History In 1769, the Spanish Portolá expedition, first Europeans to see inland areas of California, traveled north t ...

, he received a bachelor's degree from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

with a major in chemistry and earned his Ph.D. 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 ...

in 1959.Levin, Jay
"Richard H. Tedford, 82; paleontologist and author"
, ''

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'', July 21, 2001. Accessed July 22, 2011. "Richard H. Tedford of Demarest, whose eminent, decades-long career as a vertebrate paleontologist took him on fossil explorations of Australia, China and the American West, died last Friday. He was 82." Tedford was one of the foremost authorities on the evolution of

Carnivores A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

and had been working, often with Prof. Xiaoming Wang, on the fossil history of the

Canidae Canidae (; from Latin, ''canis'', "dog") is a biological family of dog-like carnivorans, colloquially referred to as dogs, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid (). There are three subfamilies found within th ...

establishing the basis on the evolutionary relationship of canids over the past 40 million years. Tedford was a resident of

Demarest, New Jersey Demarest is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 4,881,Cresskill Cresskill is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 8,573,Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh) Riversleigh World Heritage Area is Australia's most famous fossil location, recognised for the series of well preserved fossils deposited from the Late Oligocene to more recent geological periods. The fossiliferous limestone system is located ne ...

, he was commemorated in the epithet of an

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

microbat species ''

Rhinonicteris tedfordi ''Rhinonicteris tedfordi'' is an extinct species of microbat, of the order Chiroptera, known from fossil material found in Australia. Taxonomy The description of the fossil specimens as an extinct species was published by Suzanne J. Hand in 19 ...

''.

Publications

*Phylogenetic systematics of the North American fossil Caninae (Carnivora, Canidae) 200

* Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. Xiaoming Wang and Richard H. Tedford,
Phylogenetic systematics of the Borophaginae (Carnivora, Canidae)
/ Xiaoming Wang, Richard H. Tedford, Beryl E. Taylor. New York : American Museum of Natural History, c1999. *The terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene transition in North America, 433–452. New York: Cambridge University Press, Wang, X.-M., and R.H. Tedford. 1996. Canidae. In D.R. Prothero and R.J. Emry (editors)
Ancestry: evolutionary history, molecular systematics, and evolutionary ecology of Canidae
The biology and conservation of wild canids. New York: Oxford University Press, Wang, X.-M., R.H. Tedford, B. Van Valkenburgh, and R.K. Wayne. 2004.
Review of some Carnivora (Mammalia) from the Thomas Farm local fauna (Hemingfordian, Gilchrist County, Florida)
by Richard H. Tedford, American Museum of Natural History, 1976 Late Cenozoic Yushe Basin, Shanxi Province, China: Geology and Fossil Mammals, Richard Tedford, Zhan-Xiang Qiu, Lawrence Flynn 2012

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tedford, Richard H. American paleontologists People associated with the American Museum of Natural History 1929 births 2011 deaths Accidental deaths from falls People from Cresskill, New Jersey People from Demarest, New Jersey People from Encino, Los Angeles University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni