Archaeopteryx Lithographica: A study Based Upon the British Museum Specimen

LANDMARK ANALYSIS OF AN ARCHAEOPTERYX FOSSIL, CLARIFYING ITS LINK BETWEEN REPTILES AND BIRDS. 12 1/2 inches tall folio hardcover, brown cloth binding, blindstamped covers, gilt title to spine, bookplate of academic physician Noble Suydam Rustum Maluf to front paste-down, frontis of model Archaeopteryx, xi, errata slip, 68 pp; 16 plates (each with descriptive text leaf); 9 figures in text. Near Fine in custom archival mylar cover. FROM THE PREFACE: When Archaeopteryx was acquired by the British Museum in 1862 it was immediately studied by Richard Owen, then Superintendent of the Natural History Departments and later first Director of the British Museum (Natural History), and since at that time the Museum had scarcely begun to publish scientific monographs on its own account, Owen's work appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Subsequent investi&ators, including several members of the Museum staff, have from time to time added either to our detailed knowledge of Archaeopteryx itself or to the numerous hypothetical interpretations of the facts observed, and it is a matter of great satisfaction that the accumulated observations of ninety years on one of the Museum's most famous fossils are now reviewed in this monograph by Sir Gavin de Beer, the present Director of the British Museum (Natural History). With further treatment and development of the British Museum specimen in the laboratories of the Geological Department, and with new techniques of examination, Sir Gavin has moreover been able to add several new observations, as well as defining more clearly the close relationship of the only two known specimens of Archaeopteryx, SIR GAVIN DE BEER (1899 1972) was a British evolutionary embryologist, known for his work on heterochrony as recorded in his 1930 book Embryos and Ancestors. He was director of the Natural History Museum, London, president of the Linnean Society of London, and a winner of the Royal Society's Darwin Medal for his studies on evolution. In 1945, de Beer became professor of zoology and was, from 1946 to 1949, president of the Linnean Society. Then he was director of the British Museum (Natural History) (now the Natural History Museum), from 1950 until his retirement in 1960. He was knighted in 1954, and awarded the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1957.[1] In 1958 he delivered the British Academy's Master-Mind Lecture, on Charles Darwin. After his retirement, de Beer moved to Switzerland and worked on several publications on Charles Darwin, including first publication of Darwin's manuscripts including his private notebooks, opening them to scholarship which became the Darwin Industry.

Product Info

Publisher: Trustees of the British Museum

Year: 1954

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

First Edition

Seller Info

BiomedRareBooksLLCABAAILABIOBA

Address: P.O. Box 193 North Garden, Virginia

Website: https://www.biomedrarebooks.com

Country: United States