Samuel Wendell Williston

Samuel Wendell Williston ( * July 10, 1852 in Boston, Massachusetts, † August 30, 1918 in Chicago) was an American paleontologist, entomologist, geologist and illustrator. He was the first to the thesis that birds have developed their ability to fly along the ground running and not jumping from branch to branch. Its fossil record, he illustrated carefully.

Life and work

Samuel Wendell Williston was the son of Samuel and Jane A. Williston Williston. 1857 the family moved to Manhattan, Kansas. He studied at the Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University) and graduated in 1872 with a Bachelor of Science degree.

From 1876 to 1885 he worked as an assistant to the American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. On behalf of Marsh and under the direction of Benjamin Franklin Mudge (1817-1879), he undertook his first expedition in 1874 in search of fossils. With Mudge together he discovered in 1878 in a further expedition, the dinosaur genera Allosaurus and Diplodocus.

From 1886 to 1890 he was professor of anatomy at Yale University and then to 1902 professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Kansas. Among his academic students were among others Barnum Brown, Ermine Cowles Case and Clarence Erwin McClung. From 1902 until his death in 1918, he worked as a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago.

In addition to his teaching, he was a member of the Geological Society of America and the National Academy of Sciences, correspondent for the London Geological and Zoological societies, president of the Kansas Academy of Science and in 1903 president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Publications

The catalog of works by Samuel Wendell Williston comprises about 250 scientific papers. A selection:

  • Synopsis of the Families and Genera of North American Diptera. , 1888.
  • Restoration of Dolichorhynchops osborni: A new cretaceous plesiosaur. In 1902.
  • North American Plesiosaurs: Elasmosaurus, Cimoliasaurus, and Polycotylus. In 1906.
  • The Skull of Brachauchenius: With Observations on the Relationships of the plesiosaurs. In 1907.
  • American Permian Vertebrates. , 1911.
  • Water Reptiles of the Past and Present. , 1914.
  • Ogmodirus martinii, a new plesiosaur from the Cretaceous of Kansas., 1917.
  • The Osteology of the Reptiles. In 1925.
  • Elasmosaurid plesiosaurs with description of new material from California and Colorado., 1943.

Documents

  • Samuel Wendell Williston memorandum on ( National Academy of Sciences ) (PDF 2.8 MB, English)
  • Barnum Brown: Samuel Wendell Williston (1852-1918) ( biography, published in the American Museum Journal 1918)
Manhattan (Kansas) Cricosaurus Integrated Authority File
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