Richard Lydekker was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

, geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

 and writer of numerous books on natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

.

Biography

Lydekker was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, where he took a first-class in the Natural Science tripos (1872). In 1874 he joined the Geological Survey of India

Geological Survey of India

Geological Survey of India , established in 1851 is a government organization in India which is an attached office to the Ministry of Mines of Union Government of India for conducting geological surveys and studies. It is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and the second oldest...

 and made studies of the vertebrate paleontology of northern India (especially Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

). He remained in this post until 1882. He was responsible for the cataloguing of the fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

s, reptile

Reptile

Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...

s and bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s in the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

 (10 vols., 1891). His books included A Manual of Palaeontology (with Henry Alleyne Nicholson

Henry Alleyne Nicholson

Henry Alleyne Nicholson was a British palaeontologist and zoologist.The son of Dr. John Nicholson, a biblical scholar, was born at Penrith, Cumbria on 11 September 1844. He was educated at Appleby Grammar School and at the universities of Göttingen and Edinburgh...

, 2 vols., 1889), Phases of Animal Life (1892) The Royal Natural History (with W. H. Fowler, 8 vols., 1893-6) and The Wild Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet (1900). He was a contributor to Encyclopædia Britannicas 11th edition

Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time...

.

Lydekker was also influential in the science of biogeography

Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...

. In 1895 he delineated the biogeographical boundary through Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, known as Lydekker's Line, that separates Wallacea

Wallacea

Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of Indonesian islands separated by deep water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram, and...

 on the west from Australia-New Guinea on the east.

Lydekker wrote the Royal Natural History London, Frederick Warne & Co

Frederick Warne & Co

Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...

, 1894–96 a twelve volume popular work.

External links

• Partial bibliography at DinoData
• Lydekkers publications about rhinos
• map of Wallace's, Weber's and Lydekker's lines
• BDH Online versions of some Richard Lydekker publications.