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
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/)
Chapter
Barrow, Mark V., Jr.;
(2010)
On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001000296/)
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/)
Article
Samyn, Yves;
(2014)
Return to Sender: Hydrozoa Collected by Emperor Hirohito of Japan in the 1930s and Studied in Brussels
(/isis/citation/CBB001321119/)
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/)
Article
Eleanor Larsson;
(2022)
“Here They Are in Flesh and Feather”: Walter Rothschild's “Private Zoo” and the Preparation and Taxonomic Study of Cassowaries
(/isis/citation/CBB700169968/)
Be the first to comment!