William Pierce Brodkorb (September 29, 1908,

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

– July 18, 1992,

Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, which had a population of 339,247 in ...

) was an American

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

and

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 ...

. Interested in birds since childhood, he was taught to prepare birds at the age of 16. Later, he received the opportunity to work as a staff technician in the Ornithology Division of the

Field Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

. He entered the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1933 and obtained his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

degree in 1936. Subsequently, he became an assistant

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

of birds at the

Museum of Zoology The Museum of Zoology () of National Taiwan University (NTU) is a museum about zoology at the NTU main campus in Da'an District, Taipei, Taiwan. History The museum was originally established in 1928 during the Japanese rule. In the early days ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

until 1946. In 1946, he accepted a professorate in the Department of Zoology at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

in Gainesville, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. His doctoral students include Glen E. Woolfenden. From the 1950s, Brodkorb built up a huge collection of bird fossils from the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, which included 12,500 skeletons from 129 families, and is on display at the

Florida Museum of Natural History The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) is Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural-history museum. Its main facilities are located at 3215 Hull Road on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville. The main pub ...

, part of the University of Florida. From 1963 to 1978, he published the ''Catalogue of Fossil Birds'' in five volumes. In 1982, he became an honorary member of the Florida Ornithological Society. Brodkorb described several prehistoric bird genera, such as ''

Alexornis ''Alexornis'' is a genus of enantiornithine birds from the Bocana Roja Formation of Baja California, Mexico.Tykoski, R. S., & Fiorillo, A. R. (2010). An enantiornithine bird from the lower middle Cenomanian of Texas. ''Journal of Vertebrate Pa ...

'', '' Eostrix'', and '' Titanis'', for the first time. A number of

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

were named in his honour – usually employing his name as a

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bo ...

–, e.g. '' Aegolius acadicus brodkorbi'', '' Empidonax fulvifrons brodkorbi'', '' Henocitta brodkorbi'' or '' Paraptenodytes brodkorbi''. More unusual is the case of the enigmatic fossil bird '' Foro panarium'':

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

'' forō'' means " pierce hole into something, and '' panarium'' is the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

term for a basket to store bread – in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

(whence Brodkorb's family name originated) a ''Brotkorb''. Hence, ''Foro panarium'' is the Latin translation of "Brodkorb Pierce", as the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

name can be considered the equivalent of a person's family name.

Storrs Olson Storrs Lovejoy Olson (April 3, 1944 – January 20, 2021) was an American biologist and ornithologist who spent his career at the Smithsonian Institution, retiring in 2008. One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, he was best known ...

, in naming ''F. panarium'', would have preferred the correct sequence of names (i.e. "Panarium foro"), but the genus name ''Panarium'' had already been used by

Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...

for someToday included in '' Didymocyrtis'', or '' Ommatartus'' if that genus is accepted as distinct. spumellarian

radiolaria The Radiolaria, also called Radiozoa, are protozoa of diameter 0.1–0.2 mm that produce intricate mineral skeletons, typically with a central capsule dividing the cell into the inner and outer portions of endoplasm and ectoplasm. The el ...

ns.

Notes

External links

In memoriam: Pierce BrodkorbProfile
sora.unm.edu; accessed July 6, 2017.
Online catalogue of fossil birds
accessed July 6, 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brodkorb, Pierce American ornithologists American paleontologists 1908 births 1992 deaths Scientists from Chicago University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American zoologists