Clive Forster Cooper

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Sir Clive Forster Cooper (born April 3, 1880 in Hampstead (London) , † August 23, 1947 ) was an English paleontologist and director of the Natural History Museum of London .

Life

Clive Forster Cooper was the son of the solicitor John Forster Cooper, whose family line can be traced back to the year 1427. He attended a private school in Oxford (Summerfields) and studied from 1897 at the Trinity College of the University of Cambridge , where he Zoology , Physiology and Geology studied. It was here that Professor Stanley Gardiner became aware of Forster Cooper and took him on a research expedition to the Maldives in his second year at university in 1899 . On the go with a schoonerand 20 crew members, they collected a lot of material around the island world, both from the interior of the islands and in the surrounding coral reefs . Due to malaria, Gardiner had to go to Colombo ( Sri Lanka , then Ceylon ) to recover there, so it was up to Forster Cooper to continue and end the expedition at the age of 20. He returned to England with his crew and ship and graduated from Cambridge in 1901.

Research focus and work in Cambridge

Immediately after his studies, Forster Cooper took up research studies with the International North Sea Fisheries Commission , which lasted from 1902 to 1903, and then set out in 1905 to study in the Seychelles . He used his return to Cambridge in 1906 to review his two expeditions to the Indian Ocean . During this time Forster Cooper met the paleontologist Charles William Andrews from the Natural History Museum in London , who invited him to the Fayyum in Egypt , one of the most important fossil sites from the Eocene to the Oligocene period . The expedition started in 1907, during which numerous finds were discovered and the focus of Forster Cooper's research shifted from marine biology to paleontology . He then spent a year at the American Museum of Natural History to study other fossils and met important personalities such as Henry Fairfield Osborn , Walter W. Granger , William King Gregory and William Diller Matthew , whom he also knew during their field research in Wyoming helped. When Forster Cooper returned to Cambridge in 1910, he learned of important discoveries by Guy Ellcock Pilgrim in the Bugti Mountains of Balochistan and organized an expedition there that same year, which was followed by another in 1911. Countless fossils were discovered, including those of a huge animal, which Pilgrim briefly named as Aceratherium bugtiense . Forster Cooper prepared the bones himself in Cambridge and at the end of 1911 published the discovery of Paraceratherium , the largest land mammal of all time and which was partly based on Pilgrim's Aceratherium finds.

The First World War interrupted Forster Cooper's research. Since he had also completed a medical degree, he was hired to develop a cure for malaria, with which he denied his military service. In 1921 he resigned from military service and became director of the University of Cambridge Zoological Museum, a post he had already accepted in 1914. In this position he reformed the university's library system , but also found time to re-study the fossils from the Bugti Mountains.

At the Natural History Museum

In 1938, at the age of 58, Forster Copper was appointed director of the Natural History Museum . This enabled him to study much more extensive fossil material, including Paleozoic fish, the Eocene Hyracotherian and Ice Age mammoths . He traveled extensively and designed a new concept for the museum with free-standing skeletal reconstructions that would bring it to the forefront of natural history museums in the world, comparable to those of New York and Yale . However, the Second World War interrupted this work. In 1939 Forster Cooper had the museum holdings, which included alcohol-preserved specimens and fragile fossils, relocated to Tring in Hertfordshire , 30 km north of London, where he hoped that, due to the insignificance of the place, it would escape a bombardment by the Germans. During the war the museum building in London was permanently manned by fire fighters in order to be able to put out fires caused by bombs immediately. Forster Cooper was also there every day. Immediately after the end of the war, Forster Cooper organized the return transport of the fossils and exhibits as well as the repair of the museum itself, but the lack of money led to constant delays. Clive Forster Cooper died at the age of 67 from multiple sinus infections while he was still serving as museum director, which prevented him from opening the new exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

Honors

Forster Cooper received several honors for his lifetime achievements. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1936 and was named a Knight Bachelor in 1946. Horace Elmer Wood named Forstercooperia after him in 1938 , the earliest representative of the Indricotheriidae , which also includes Paraceratherium . However, Wood had to rename the first chosen name Cooperia later, since a roundworm already had this name. The species Gomphotherium cooperi , a trunk animal introduced by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1926 and now extinct , was named after Forster Cooper.

Fonts (selection)

  • Paraceratherium bugtiense, a new genus of Rhinocerotidae from the Bugti Hils of Baluchistan: preliminary notice. Annals and Magazine of Natural History (8) 8, 1911, pp. 711-716
  • New genera and species of mammals from the Miocene deposits of Baluchistan. Annals and Magazine of Natural History (8) 16, 1915, pp. 404-410
  • On the skull and dentition of Paraceratherium bugtiense: a genus of aberrant rhinoceros from the lower Miocene deposits of Dera Bugti. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (B) 212, 1924, pp. 369-394
  • The extinct Rhinoceroses of Baluchistan. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal by Browse to Save "id =" 3154799_GPLITA_0 "> Society of London (B) 223, 1934, pp. 569-616
  • The Middle Devonian fish fauna of Achanarras. Transactions of the Royal Society Edinburgh 59, 1937, pp. 223-239

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Donald R. Prothero: Rhino giants: The palaeobiology of Indricotheres. Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 1-141 (pp. 21-24) ISBN 978-0-253-00819-0
  2. ↑ Horace Elmer Wood: Cooperia totadentata, a remarkable rhinoceros from the eocene of Mongolia. American Museum Novitates 1012, 1938, pp. 1-22

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Forster Cooper, Clive
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Hampstead (London)
DATE OF DEATH August 23, 1947