Samuel Wendell Williston

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Samuel Wendell Williston, circa 1890s

Samuel Wendell Williston (born July 10, 1852 in Boston , Massachusetts , † August 30, 1918 in Chicago ) was an American paleontologist , entomologist , geologist and illustrator . He was the first to propose the thesis that birds developed their ability to fly on the ground from running and not from jumping from branch to branch. He carefully illustrated his fossil finds .

Live and act

Samuel Wendell Williston, 1891

Samuel Wendell Williston was the son of Samuel Williston and Jane A. Williston. In 1857 the family moved to Manhattan , Kansas . He studied at Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University ) and graduated in 1872 with a Bachelor of Science .

From 1876 to 1885 he was an assistant to the American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University . Commissioned by Marsh and under the direction of Benjamin Franklin Mudge (1817–1879), he undertook his first expedition in 1874 in search of fossils. Together with Mudge, he discovered the dinosaur genera Allosaurus and Diplodocus on another expedition in 1878 .

From 1886 to 1890 he was professor of anatomy at Yale University and then until 1902 professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Kansas . His academic students included Barnum Brown , Ermine Cowles Case, and Clarence Erwin McClung , among others . From 1902 until his death in 1918 he was a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago .

In addition to teaching, he was a member of the Geological Society of America , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1915) and the National Academy of Sciences (1915), correspondent for the London Geological and Zoological societies , president of the Kansas Academy of Science and ab 1903 President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology .

Publications

Live reconstruction of Cricosaurus made by Williston

The catalog raisonné by Samuel Wendell Williston comprises around 250 scientific papers . A selection:

  • Synopsis of the Families and Genera of North American Diptera . 1888.
  • Restoration of Dolichorhynchops osborni: A new cretaceous plesiosaur . 1902.
  • North American Plesiosaurs: Elasmosaurus, Cimoliasaurus, and Polycotylus . 1906.
  • The Skull of Brachauchenius: With Observations on the Relationships of the plesiosaurs . 1907.
  • American Permian Vertebrates . 1911.
  • Water Reptiles of the Past and Present . 1914.
  • Ogmodirus martinii, a new plesiosaur from the cretaceous of Kansas . 1917.
  • The Osteology of the Reptiles . 1925.
  • Elasmosaurid plesiosaurs with description of new material from California and Colorado . 1943.

supporting documents

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel Wendell Williston: Water Reptiles of the Past and Present . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Illinois, 1914. p. 208

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Williston, Samuel Wendell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist, entomologist, and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1918
Place of death Chicago