Peter Pritchard
Peter Charles Howard Pritchard (born June 26, 1943 in Hertfordshire , † February 25, 2020 in Orlando , Florida ) was a British zoologist , conservationist and author. His main interests were the research and protection of turtles .
Life
In 1952, Pritchard moved to Belfast, where his father taught anatomy at Queen's University . From 1955 to 1961 he attended Campbell College in Belfast. He then enrolled in Magdalen College of the University of Oxford , where he both the 1964 Bachelor of Arts and the Master of Arts in chemistry and biochemistry gained. During Pritchard's time at Oxford his biological interests grew and after a year of research in biochemistry, he was accepted as a teaching assistant in zoology at the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1965 . In the mid-1960s, Pritchard traveled to Guyana , where he studied the Atlantic hybrid turtles and leatherback turtles . During his research, he realized that the sea turtles were threatened with extinction due to over-hunting by the arawak . He initiated a conservation program that focused primarily on working with local residents, and he raised funds from private donors to keep this program alive. He was also able to convince the Arawaks to use chickens as an alternative source of food, and he hired them as a beach police against nest poachers. Since then, turtle killing and egg harvesting has become socially unacceptable in Guyana.
1969 Pritchard with the dissertation Studies of the systematics and reproductive cycles of the genus Lepidochelys led by Archie Carr to the Ph.D. PhD from the University of Florida.
In 1997 Pritchard founded the Chelonian Research Institute in Oviedo , Florida, a museum that contains 14,500 unique pieces, the third largest collection of turtle shells, bones and skulls in the world (behind the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution ). In 2000 he received from Time Magazine the award Hero of the Planet .
Pritchard has published several books on turtles, including Living Turtles of the World (1967), Marine Turtles of Micronesia (1977), Encyclopedia of Turtles (1979), Manual of sea turtle research and conservation techniques: A Symposium on Sea Turtle Research in the Western Central Atlantic (1983), Turtles of Venezuela (1984), The Alligator Snapping Turtle (1990, reissued in 2006), Galapagos Tortoises: Nomenclatural and Survival Status (1996), Cleopatra the Turtle Girl (2006), Tales from the Thébaide (2007) and Rafetus: The Curve of Extinction (2012).
Dedication names
In 1994 Anders Rhodin named the snake necked turtle Chelodina pritchardi and in 1997 William Patrick McCord named Mauremys × pritchardi (a brook turtle hybrid from Mauremys mutica & Mauremys reevesii ) in honor of Peter Pritchard.
literature
- About the Author In: Peter CH Pritchard: Living Turtles of the World. 1967, OCLC 431292 , p. 4.
- Peter Pritchard: The Face of Sea Turtle Conservation In: James R. Spotila: Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8018-8007-6 , p. 80.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Orlando Business Journal: World-renowned turtle conservationist Peter Pritchard this February 26, 2020, accessed March 4, 2020
Web links
- Valencia News: Tortoise Expert to Lecture on the Life and Lessons We Can Learn from 'Lonesome George'
- Turtle Conservancy: Short biography Peter Pritchard
- Marginata - The Turtle Magazine. Short biography of Peter Pritchard
- Peter Pritchard: Hero of the Planet
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pritchard, Peter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pritchard, Peter Charles Howard (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British zoologist, conservationist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 26, 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hertfordshire , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 25, 2020 |
| Place of death | Orlando , Florida |