British palaeontologist
Alan J. Charig
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Born
| (
1927-07-01
)
1 July 1927
England
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Died
| 15 July 1997
(1997-07-15)
(aged 70)
England
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Nationality
| British
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Scientific career
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Fields
| Palaeontology
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Alan Jack Charig
(1 July 1927 ? 15 July 1997) was an English
palaeontologist
[1]
and writer who popularised his subject on television and in books at the start of the wave of interest in dinosaurs in the 1970s.
Charig was, though, first and foremost a
research scientist
in the Department of Palaeontology at the
Natural History Museum
, London. There he worked on dinosaurs and their immediate
Triassic
ancestors, but also studied creatures as varied as limbless
amphisbaenians
(worm-lizards) and a Fijian gastropod,
Thatcheria
.
Biography
[
edit
]
Charig was educated at
The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
, an independent school (at that time in
Hampstead
), and
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
. His university education was interrupted by
National Service
in the
Royal Armoured Corps
, first as a
tank
driver and, after volunteering for an Inter-Services Russian language course at
Cambridge
, as a Russian
interpreter
in Germany, from 1946 to 1948.
On graduating in
Zoology
in 1951, Charig took a doctorate at
Cambridge
, supervised by the late
Francis Rex Parrington
. His subject was
Triassic
archosaurs
of
Tanganyika
.
After a short spell as lecturer in Zoology in the
Gold Coast
(now
Ghana
), in 1957 Charig took up a post in
Invertebrate palaeontology
at the Natural History Museum. He remained at the museum for the rest of his career, becoming Curator of
Fossil
Reptiles and Birds in 1961, and Principal Scientific Officer in 1964.
Life at the museum suited Charig well. He enjoyed meeting the public, especially children, and was an entertaining lecturer. He was known to write detailed letters in response to written questions and ideas from member of the public, again particularly children.
He wrote and presented a 10-part series on
vertebrate palaeontology
,
Before the Ark
(1973) on
BBC
television, and wrote the accompanying book. His second semi-popular book,
A New Look at the Dinosaurs
(1979), had an even greater impact and was translated into several languages.
Charig also planned
exhibitions
, notably in the museum's Fossil Mammal Gallery between 1970 and 1988. He retained his fluency in Russian from his Army days and gave classes in conversational Russian for his colleagues.
Despite long periods of poor health, Charig made many original scholarly contributions to dinosaur science, including an hypothesis to explain the unusual
pelvic structure
in plant-eating dinosaurs, which he referred to informally as "the femur-knocking-on-the-pubis problem".
In the mid-1980s, he found himself defending the museum's most famous fossil, the earliest known bird,
Archaeopteryx
, the authenticity of which was challenged by
Sir Fred Hoyle
. Charig responded with a characteristically robust refutation.
Charig loved travel; he climbed mountains in
Peru
and visited
Timbuktu
in a
Morris Minor
. He led museum expeditions to
Zambia
and
Tanzania
in 1963, to
Lesotho
in 1966 (discovering the oldest articulated
fossil mammal
skeleton
in
Early Jurassic
rocks), and in 1978 to the
Early Cretaceous
of
Queensland
(turning up one of the earliest
herrings
).
A
British Council
scheme afforded a privileged visit to China, in 1979. It proved the forerunner of a joint field expedition to
Sichuan
in 1982 by the museum and the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, Beijing.
This trip was the most fascinating of his many foreign experiences. However, the next year, a rather less exotic location ? a brick-pit near
Ockley
, in
Surrey
, England ? provided Charig with the most exciting research project of his career. He excavated
Baryonyx walkeri
, a remarkable fish-eating dinosaur from the
Early Cretaceous
Period.
After his retirement in 1987, Charig continued his research work at the Natural History Museum. At this period he also took up a two-month research fellowship awarded by the
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
. In 1995, he went on an arduous tour of
fossil
sites throughout
Argentina
.
His final
scientific publication
, a
monograph
on the
Surrey
dinosaur
Baryonyx
, of which he was the senior author, was published at the end of June 1997. At the time of his death, two weeks later, Charig was working on several long-standing projects, notably the description of one of the earliest plant-eating dinosaurs,
Scelidosaurus
, from
Dorset
, England. A modern description of this genus only materialised in 2020.
References
[
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]
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