Charles William Andrews

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Charles William Andrews (born October 30, 1866 in Hampstead (London) , † May 25, 1924 ) was a British vertebrate paleontologist , zoologist and botanist.

Andrews studied at the University of London , then worked first as a school teacher and after successfully passing the entrance exams in 1892 became an assistant at the British Museum of Natural History in the Department of Geology, where he initially dealt with fossil birds. In 1900 he received a D.Sc. from the University of London for his research.

There he described the extinct elephant bird ( Aepyornis titan - now known as Vorombe titan ) from Madagascar in 1894 and examined flightless birds on islands in the Indian Ocean (Rallen on Mauritius , the Chatham Islands and New Zealand ), where he came to the conclusion that they independently as islanders lost their ability to fly. In 1897/98 and again in 1908 he was on the Christmas Islands for several months in order to record the natural state (fauna, flora, geology) of the island before the start of phosphate mining.

He also described the fossil seabird Prophaeton shrubsolei from the Isle of Sheppey's early Eocene (found in the London Clay).

From 1910 to 1913 his catalog of the finds of marine reptiles and plesiosaurs by Alfred N. Leeds from the Jura of Peterborough (Oxford Clay) was published. Crocodiles, ichthyosaurs, sauropterygia such as plesiosaurs (about which he published as early as 1895) and other marine reptiles later formed a focus of his research.

From 1900 to 1906 he stayed in Egypt for health reasons during the winter months, where he worked on the Geological Survey at HJL Beadnell. He examined among other fossils of fish and mammals (fossil mammoths ( Moeritherium , phiomia and Palaeomastodon ), hyrax ( Saghatherium and Megalohyrax ), manatees, whales) from the Tertiary of the Fayyum . From this work resulted in 1906 with A descriptive catalog of the Tertiary Vertebrata of the Fayum, Egypt an overview work on the fossils of the Fayyum, which is still regarded as a standard work today.

In 1916 he received the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society, of which he was temporarily vice president. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1906 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles W. Andrews: A Monograph of Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) , Bulletin of the British Museum. (Natural History), Geology Series, 13, 1900, pp. 1-337
  2. ^ Charles W. Andrews: Descriptive Catalog of the marine reptiles of the Oxford Clay , British Museum, 2 volumes, 1910, 1913
  3. ^ Charles W. Andrews: A descriptive catalog of the Tertiary Vertebrata of the Fayum, Egypt. British Museum, 1906, pp. 1-324
personal data
SURNAME Andrews, Charles William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British paleontologist, zoologist and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Hampstead (London)
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1924