Charles William Andrews

Charles William Andrews ( born October 30, 1866 in Hampstead ( London), † May 25, 1924 ) was a British vertebrate paleontologist, zoologist and botanist.

Andrews studied at London University, then worked as a school teacher and, after successfully passing the entrance exams 1892 assistant at the British Museum of Natural History in the Department of Geology, where he was first engaged in fossil birds. In 1900 he was awarded a D.Sc. the University of London for his research.

He described there in 1894 the extinct elephant bird ( Aepyornis titan - now expected to Aepyornis maximus) of Madagascar and examined flightless birds on islands in the Indian Ocean ( Rails on Mauritius, the Chatham Islands, New Zealand ), where he came to the conclusion that they had independently lost as islanders their ability to fly. 1897/98 ( and again in 1908), he was to hold for several months on Christmas Island to the natural state ( fauna, flora, geology) of the island before the start of phosphate mining.

He also described the fossil seabird Prophaeton shrubsolei from the early Eocene of the Isle of Sheppey ( London Clay found in ).

1910 to 1913 he published his catalog of the finds of marine reptiles and plesiosaurs of Alfred N. Leeds from the Jurassic of Peterborough (Oxford Clay ). Crocodiles, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs as Sauropterygia ( about which he published in 1895 ) and other marine reptiles were later also a focus of his research.

1900-1906 he held for health reasons during the winter months in Egypt, where he worked at the Geological Survey at HJL Beadnell. He examined, among other fossils of fish and mammals ( Moeritherium, mastodon, fossil hyrax, manatees, whales ) from the Tertiary of Fayum.

In 1916 he was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society, the Vice President, he was at times. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1906.