Article ID: CBB001321123

The First Egg of Jerdon's Courser Rhinoptilus bitorquatus and a Review of the Early Records of This Species (2014)

unapi

For most of the twentieth century, Jerdon's courser (Rhinoptilus bitorquatus) was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 1986. Since then, despite much research, the bird remains poorly known. A Critically Endangered southern Indian endemic, recorded from a restricted area of about 50 square kilometres, its nocturnal habits, infrequent vocalizations, scrub-jungle habitat and low population size make it difficult to observe. Almost nothing is known about its breeding or ecology. Its nest has never been seen by an ornithologist. The first known egg of the species was recently discovered in a collection at the University of Aberdeen and its identity confirmed by DNA analysis. It had been collected by Ernest Gilbert Meaton, a veterinary surgeon at the Kolar Gold Fields, east of Bangalore. He probably obtained it in 1917, within 100 km of Kolar. Meaton's egg collection was purchased by George Falconer Rose, a successful expatriate Scot working in Calcutta, and given to Aberdeen Grammar School in 1919. In the 1970s, the school gave the collection to the University of Aberdeen, where the egg was discovered in 2008. This paper collates and reviews the early records of Jerdon's courser and examines the provenance of the egg. The type specimen of the courser now appears to be lost, but five other specimens exist in collections.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001321123/

Similar Citations

Book Arthur MacGregor; (2019)
Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874 (/isis/citation/CBB007862581/)

Article Grouw, H. Van; Bloch, D.; (2015)
History of the Extant Museum Specimens of the Faroese White-Speckled Raven (/isis/citation/CBB001500435/)

Article Grouw, H. Van; Bloch, D.; (2015)
History of the Extant Museum Specimens of the Faroese White-Speckled Raven (/isis/citation/CBB001422132/)

Article Lucas, A. M.; Lucas, P. J.; (2014)
Natural History “Collectors”: Exploring the Ambiguities (/isis/citation/CBB001321122/)

Article Karl Schulze-Hagen; Tim R. Birkhead; (2023)
“Der fluglose Alk”: Johann Friedrich Naumann’s 1844 account of Pinguinus impennis (great auk) (/isis/citation/CBB688828890/)

Book Marc Schlossman; (2022)
Extinction: Our Fragile Relationship with Life on Earth (/isis/citation/CBB308676844/)

Article Jansen, J. J. F. J.; Mije, S. D. van der; (2015)
Review of the Mounted Skins and Skulls of the Extinct Falkland Islands Wolf, Dusicyon australis, Held in Museum Collections (/isis/citation/CBB001500441/)

Article Fellers, Gary M.; (2014)
Animal Taxa Named for Rollo H. Beck (/isis/citation/CBB001321126/)

Book Ian J. Mason; Gilbert H. Pfitzner; (2020)
Passions in ornithology: A century of Australian egg collectors (/isis/citation/CBB993195850/)

Article Jarvis, Charles E.; Cooper, Joanne H.; (2014)
Maidstone's Woodpecker – an Unexpected Bird Specimen in the Herbarium of Sir Hans Sloane (/isis/citation/CBB001202217/)

Article Marianna Szczygielska; (2022)
Undoing Extinction: The Role of Zoos in Breeding Back the Tarpan Wild Horse, 1922–1945 (/isis/citation/CBB178294700/)

Article Nuria Valverde-Pérez; (2020)
Preserved Worlds: Vulnerability, Ontology, and the Logics of Standards (/isis/citation/CBB330401225/)

Book Gaskell, Jeremy; (2001)
Who Killed the Great Auk? (/isis/citation/CBB000100214/)

Article Lorimer, Jamie; (2008)
Counting Corncrakes: The Affective Science of the UK Corncrake Census (/isis/citation/CBB000953501/)

Article Fein, Julia; (2013)
Talking Rocks in the Irkutsk Museum: Networks of Science in Late Imperial Siberia (/isis/citation/CBB001201407/)

Article Baytop, Asuman; (2012)
J. V. Aznavur (1861--1920), stanbul Bitkileri Koleksiyonu ve Yayinlari (/isis/citation/CBB001320505/)

Article S. G. Sealy; (2021)
Hamilton Mack Laing's specimen of a whooping crane, Grus americana (/isis/citation/CBB842105374/)

Authors & Contributors
Grouw, H. Van
Bloch, D.
Ian J. Mason
S. G. Sealy
Larsson, Eleanor
Karl Schulze-Hagen
Concepts
Birds
Biological specimens
Collections
Collectors and collecting
Specimens
Extinction (biology)
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
17th century
Places
Germany
Istanbul (Turkey)
Galapagos Islands
England
Manitoba (Canada)
Islands of the Pacific
Institutions
Rohschild Museum (England)
California Academy of Sciences
East India Company (English)
Field Museum of Natural History
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (University of California, Berkeley)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment