Pierre-Médard Diard

Pierre- Médard Diard ( born March 19, 1794 in Saint -Laurent -en- Gâtines, † February 16, 1863 in Jakarta ) was a French naturalist.

Shortly after the beginning of medical school Diard was drafted for military service and served from 1813 to 1814.

He then studied egg Georges Cuvier Zoology and Anatomy and assisted him in researching the development of the fetus and the eggs of four-legged friends. In 1816 he left for South Asia.

His travels in South Asia

In May 1818, he met Alfred Duvaucel in Calcutta. Together they drove to the former trading post of the French East India Company Chandernagore, where they began, animals and plants for the Paris Muséum national d' histoire collect naturelle. They hired hunters, the daily living and dead specimens brought to them, which they described, recorded and classified. They also went himself to hunting and were objects of natural interest of local rajas. In the garden of their rented land they went native plants and water birds kept in a basin. In June 1818, it sent the first delivery to Paris, which contained, among other things, a skeleton of a swing Dolphin, the head of a Tibetan beef, some types of little-known birds, mineral specimens and a drawing of a Malaysian tapir, which they in the menagerie of the British Governor-General Hastings had made ​​from a copy held there. Subsequent deliveries contained a living young cashmere goats, pheasants and various birds.

In December 1818, Thomas Stamford Raffles invited her to accompany him on his travels and resume their collections to the places he had to officially visit. He offered them to set up a menagerie at his residence in Bencoolen. They agreed to share the zoological collection and broke in late December. In Pulau Pinang they collected two new species of fish and some birds. In Achem they collected only a few plants, insects, birds, snakes, fish, and two deer. In Malacca they bought a bear, an Argus pheasant and some birds. In Singapore, they procured a dugong from which they made drawings and a description that Raffles sent to the Royal Society and published in 1820 in England. After their arrival in Bencoolen Raffles took most of their collection in fitting and left them copies of their drawings, descriptions and notes. Duvaucel and Diard goodbye, sent their share in a depot to Calcutta and then parted.

Diard traveled to Batavia. In the spring of 1823 he sent a large shipment to Paris, the. Besides 95 species of mammals, 126 species of birds, about 100 species of snakes also contained skeletons and skins of Schabrackentapiren and Javan rhino He traveled to Borneo.

In the spring of 1824 he held probably on in Cochinchina. After 1825, he sent his natural history collections of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke History in Leiden. In 1826 he traveled and collected as an inspector of Agriculture Office of the Government of the Dutch East Indies in Borneo in the areas around Banjarmasin, Pontianak and the river Barito. In 1829 he became a member of the Natural History Commission of the Dutch East Indies and was appointed its director in 1832.

In the following years he traveled the kingdoms Annam and Cambodia. He was one of the first Europeans who visited the city of Angkor. Until 1848, Diard operated as a researcher in the Malay Archipelago.

Publications

In February 1820, the Asiatick Society ( Calcutta, India) published one of Diard and Duvaucel jointly authored article " Sur une nouvelle espèce de Sorex - Sorex Glis " including a drawing of a pointed croissant.

His legacy

The Paris Museum of Natural History have collected received nearly 2,000 animals, the Diard and Duvaucel during their travels in Sumatra and Java in a little over a year. Of your supplies included 88 species of mammals, 630 species of birds, 59 species of reptiles and contained stuffed animals, skins, skeletons, drawings and descriptions of Sumatran rhinoceros, Javan rhinoceros, Malayan tapir, gibbons, Slim and colobus monkeys, two to go unknown species of fruit bats, shrews, skunks, binturong and sun bear. First descriptions of some of these species were published by French zoologist who worked in the museum. Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest described the Malayan tapir in 1819; the Sunda Stinkdachs and Paradoxurus hermaphroditus bondar, a subspecies of Civet in 1820; the Malayan pangolin, the Nacktfußwiesel and the type Semnopithecus in the year 1822.

In 1821, Raffles published descriptions of the species that Diard and Duvaucel gathered together in Sumatra, including first descriptions of sun bear, binturong, crab eater, Sumatran Langur, Siamang, silver Haubenlangur, Large Bamboo Rat, Big tree shrews and pale giant squirrel.

In Borneo Diard collected in 1844 described as Crocodylus raninus the first example of a freshwater crocodile, the Salomon Müller and Hermann Schlegel. Schlegel also described some of Diard in Borneo collected snakes.

Dedikationsnamen

In Memory of Diard scientific names of some species have been awarded:

• The Sunda clouded leopard Neofelis diardi - described in 1823 by Georges Cuvier;
• The short nose flying fox Pachysoma diardii - described in 1828 by Étienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire synonymous with subspecies Cynopterus titthaecheilus titthaecheilus;
• The cicada Carineta diardi - described in 1829 by Félix Édouard Guérin - Méneville;
• Diards cuckoo Phaenicophaeus diardi - described in 1830 by René Primevère Lesson;
• Diards Trogon Harpactes diardii - described in 1832 by Coenraad Jacob Temminck;
• The beetle Coilodera diardi syn. Macronota diardi - described in 1833 by Hippolyte Louis Achille Rémy Gory and Percheron;
• The spider Hyllus diardi - described in 1837 by Charles Athanase Walckenaer;
• Diards blind snake Typhlops diardii - described in 1839 by Hermann Schlegel;
• The prelate pheasant Lophura diardi - Charles Lucien Bonaparte described in 1856 by;
• The nice croissant Callosciurus diardii - described in 1879 by Anna Fredericus Jentink a subspecies of Callosciurus notatus;
• The rat Rattus diardii - described in 1880 by Jentink tanezumi synonymous with Rattus;
• The ray-finned Sewellia diardi - described in 1998 by Tyson R. Roberts.