James W. Gidley

James William Gidley
James William Gidley
Born	1866
Died	1931
Nationality	American
	Scientific career
Fields	Paleontology

Last updated April 10, 2019

James William Gidley (1866-1931) was an American paleontologist and museum curator.^[1]

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleontology or palaeontology is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term itself originates from Greek παλαιός, palaios, "old, ancient", ὄν, on, "being, creature" and λόγος, logos, "speech, thought, study".

Biography

Life

Gidley was born in 1866, in Springwater, Iowa. He began collecting fossils during childhood. He attended Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1898 and a Master of Science degree in 1901. He later attended George Washington University, and earned a Ph.D in 1922.^[1]

Iowa is a state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states; Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest and Minnesota to the north.

A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood, oil, coal, and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record.

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, and renamed itself Princeton University in 1896.

He died in 1931.^[1]

Career

While he pursued his formal education, Gidley became an Assistant in Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, in 1892. He remained at this job until 1905, after which he joined the United States National Museum as the Preparator in the Section of Vertebrate Fossils. In 1908, after the development of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, he became the Custodian of Fossil Mammals. Four years later, in 1912, he became an Assistant Curator at USNM, a position he held until his death.^[1]

The American Museum of Natural History, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 28 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2 million square feet. The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

Gidley studied various fossil mammals throughout his career, including prehistoric rodents and horses. He described the species Equus scotti from Texas in 1899, and the three-toed horse genus Neohipparion from Nebraska in 1902. He named Armbruster's wolf in 1913. He began seeking remains of Pleistocene humans in Florida in the 1920s.^[1]

Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents ; they are found in vast numbers on all continents except Antarctica. They are the most diversified mammalian order and live in a variety of terrestrial habitats, including human-made environments.

<i>Equus scotti</i> species of mammal (fossil)

Equus scotti is an extinct species of Equus, the genus that includes the horse.

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.

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References

1 2 3 4 5 James W. Gidley at the SIA archives.

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[SIA_archives-1] 1 2 3 4 5 James W. Gidley at the SIA archives.