Fossil Birds in the British Museum

1891 ◽  
Vol 32 (834supp) ◽  
pp. 13326-13327
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Fossil Birds

scholarly journals Obituary notices of fellows deceased

1926 ◽  
Vol 100 (705) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Fossil Birds ◽  
Limb Bones ◽  
Vertebrate Palaeontology ◽  
General Catalogue ◽  
Fossil Bird ◽  
London Clay ◽  
The University ◽  
Geological Research

Charles William Andrews was born at Hampstead in 1866, and died in London on May 25, 1924, having spent his active official life in the service of the British Museum. He was a graduate in both arts and science of the University of London, and began his career as a schoolmaster. His main interest, however, was in biological and geological research, and in 1892 he was fortunate in being the successful candidate in a competitive examination for an assistantship in the Department of Geology in the British Museum (Natural History). Here he soon began to add original investigation to his curatorial duties, and he eventually became one of the foremost exponents of vertebrate palæontology. Dr. Andrews at first paid much attention to the fossil birds, of which a useful general catalogue had just been published by Lydekker. He made himself well acquainted with the osteology of birds, and so was adequately equipped for dealing with the large collections of bones of extinct birds which were then being discovered in the surface deposits of lands in the southern hemisphere. In his earliest paper, published in the Geological Magazine in 1894, he described some limb-bones of the largest known running bird from Madagascar, which he named Aepyornis titan . In subsequent years he made several important contributions to our knowledge of both the Aepyornithes and the fossil carinate birds of Madagascar. At the same time he studied the extinct birds of New Zealand, and a large collection of fossil bird-bones from the Chatham Islands which Lord Rothschild had obtained for the Tring Museum. He pointed out especially that the occurrence of closely related flightless rails in Mauritius, the Chatham Islands, and New Zealand, did not necessitate a former con­nection between those widely separated lands. The rails might have become flightless independently in the different restricted habitats, and an almost flightless rail, Nesolimnas , among the fossils from the Chatham Islands seemed to show that in this form the wings were actually being reduced on the spot. Dr. Andrews also published important new observations on the remains of the Stereornithes and other remarkable extinct birds, discovered by Ameghino in Patagonia, which were received by the British Museum in 1896. To the end he retained an interest in all fossil remains of birds, and his descriptions of an ancestral tropic-bird, Prophaethon , from the Eocene London Clay of Sheppey, and a sternum of the largest known flying bird from an Eocene formation in Nigeria, are especially noteworthy.

Fossil Birds

The Geologist ◽  
1863 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 415-424
Keyword(s):  
Future Study ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The State ◽  
Fossil Birds ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fossil Bird ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Do So

The wonderful remains of the Archæopteryx, recently acquired for the British Museum, have naturally drawn attention to a muchneglected department of palæontology; and it will therefore not only be interesting, but useful also to the advance of science, to pass under review, at the present time, the state of our knowledge of the former existence of birds during past geological ages. The early authors, for the most part, speak not of fossil bird-remains properly so called, but in reality of mere incrustations by “petrifying springs,” of the fanciful tracery of dendritic markings, or the imagined resemblances of oddly-formed stones. Thus Albertus Magnus, in his book ‘De Mineralibus,’ printed in 1495, describes a fossil nest, with eggs, on the branch of a tree. This might or might not be a true fossil, but our recent discoveries of fossil birds and reptiles' eggs, and the knowledge we have now of delicate objects truly fossilized, such as insects, fruits, flowers, and feathers, renders it possible that some of the old records of such may have had a foundation of truth, and gives a probability that some at least may be brought within the capacity of belief as actual facts.With this view, we shall quote from the old authors all the passages known to us, commenting on them as occasion may require; and in thus working up the bibliography of fossil ornithology and arranging the whole of our knowledge of the subject, as far as we have the power to do so, we shall be able to separate facts from fictions, and give a solid basis for further investigations in the future study of ornithological palæontology.

scholarly journals Fossil Birds in the British Museum 1

Nature ◽  
1891 ◽  
Vol 45 (1150) ◽  
pp. 33-36
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Fossil Birds

The fate of the bird specimens from Cook's voyages possessed by Sir Joseph Banks

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Medway
Keyword(s):  
Royal College ◽  
British Museum ◽  
John Hunter ◽  
The World ◽  
Extensive Collection

Joseph Banks possessed the greater part of the zoological specimens collected on James Cook's three voyages round the world (1768–1780). In early 1792, Banks divided his zoological collection between John Hunter and the British Museum. It is probable that those donations together comprised most of the zoological specimens then in the possession of Banks, including such bird specimens as remained of those that had been collected by himself and Daniel Solander on Cook's first voyage, and those that had been presented to him from Cook's second and third voyages. The bird specimens included in the Banks donations of 1792 became part of a series of transactions during the succeeding 53 years which involved the British Museum, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and William Bullock. It is a great pity that, of the extensive collection of bird specimens from Cook's voyages once possessed by Banks, only two are known with any certainty to survive.

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