Pierce Brodkorb

Pierce Brodkorb (born September 29, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois, died July 18, 1992 in Gainesville, Florida), also stated as William Pierce Brodkorb, was an American ornithologist and paleontologist.

Interested in birds since childhood, he was taught to prepare birds at the age of 16. Later, he received the opportunity to work as a staff technician in the Ornithology Division of the Field Museum. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and obtained his PhD degree in 1936. Subsequently, he became an assistant curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology in Michigan until 1946. In 1946, he accepted a professorate in the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, a position he held until his retirement in 1989.

From the 1950s, Brodkorb built up a huge collection of bird fossils from the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, which included 12,500 skeletons from 129 families, and is on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History, part of the University of Florida. From 1963 to 1978, he published the "Catalogue of FossilBirds" in five volumes. In 1982, he became an honorary member of the Florida Ornithological Society.

Brodkorb described several prehistoric bird genera, such as Alexornis or Titanis for the first time. Taxa like Paraptenodytes brodkorbi, "Aegolius acadicus brodkorbi", "Empidonax fulvifrons brodkorbi", and "Henocitta brodkorbi" were named in his honour.

External links

* [http://www2.nrm.se/ve/birds/sape/sapenews6.html.en In memoriam: Pierce Brodkorb]
* [http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v110n04/p0911-p0915.pdf Obituary] by Storrs L. Olson
* [http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=feol&idno=UF00001514&format=pdf Catalogue of fossil birds - Online]