Richard Harlan

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For other people with the same name, see Harlan § Surname.
Richard Harlan.

Richard Harlan (September 19, 1796 – September 30, 1843) was an American paleontologist, anatomist, and physician. He was the first American to devote significant time and attention to vertebrate paleontology and was one of the most important contributors to the field in the early nineteenth century. His work was noted for its focus on objective descriptions, taxonomy and nomenclature. He was the first American to apply Linnaean names to fossils.[1]

Biography[]

Harlan was born in Philadelphia on September 19, 1796, to Joshua Harlan, a wealthy Quaker merchant, and his wife Sarah Hinchman Harlan, one of their ten children. He was three years older than his brother Josiah Harlan, who would become the first American to visit Afghanistan. Harlan graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1818 after taking time off during his studies to spend a year sailing to India as a ship's surgeon for the British East India Company. In 1821 he was elected professor of comparative anatomy in the Philadelphia museum. One of his passions was the collection and study of human skulls. In 1822, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[2] At its peak, his collection contained 275 skulls, the largest such collection in America.[3] He died of apoplexy in New Orleans, Louisiana.[4]

In 1834, Harlan described and named Basilosaurus ("king lizard"), a genus of early whale, erroneously assuming he had found a Plesiosaurus-like dinosaur.[5]

Works[]

He was the author of Fauna Americana, published in 1825,[6] and American Herpetology.[4]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Sterling 1997
  2. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  3. ^ Ben MacIntyre (2004). The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Howard Atwood Kelly (1920). A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography: Comprising the Lives of Eminent Deceased Physicians and Surgeons from 1610 to 1910. W.B. Saunders Company. p. 492. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  5. ^ Harlan, R. (1834). "Notice of fossil bones found in the Tertiary formation of the State of Louisiana". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 4: 397–403. doi:10.2307/1004838. JSTOR 1004838. OCLC 63356837.
  6. ^ "Harlan's Fauna Americana". The North American Review. Frederick T. Gray. XXII (L): 120–136. January 1826 – via Google Books.

Further reading[]

  • Gerstner, Patsy (1999). "Harlan, Richard". In Garraty, John A. (ed.). American National Biography. Oxford University Press.
  • Simpson, George Gaylord (1942). "The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 86 (1): 130–188.
  • Sterling, Keir B., ed. (1997). "Harlan, Richard". Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press.
  • Spamer, Earle E. (2006). "Richard Harlan". Discovering Lewis & Clark. Retrieved 2021-09-04.
  • "Richard Harlan Journals". American Philosophical Society Library. American Philosophical Society.


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