Richard Hall Tedford (April 25, 1929 – July 15, 2011) was Curator

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology of the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

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, having been named as curator in 1969.Staff
"14 ARE APPOINTED AT MUSEUM HERE"
''

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'', August 13, 1969. Accessed July 22, 2011. Born in

Encino, California Encino is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. History Etymology The name Encino is the misspelling in masculine of Encina, the Spanish language, Spanish word for "holm oak” (Quercus ilex). The Spanis ...

, he received a bachelor's degree from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

with a major in chemistry and earned his Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1959.Levin, Jay
"Richard H. Tedford, 82; paleontologist and author"
, ''

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'', July 21, 2001. Accessed July 22, 2011. "Richard H. Tedford of Demarest, whose eminent, decades-long career as a vertebrate paleontologist took him on fossil explorations of Australia, China and the American West, died last Friday. He was 82." Tedford was one of the foremost authorities on the evolution of

Carnivores A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose nutrition and energy requirements are met by consumption of animal tissues (mainly mu ...

and had been working, often with Prof. Xiaoming Wang, on the fossil history of the

Canidae Canidae (; from Latin, ''canis'', "dog") is a family (biology), biological family of caniform carnivorans, constituting a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid (). The family includes three subfamily, subfamilies: the Caninae, a ...

establishing the basis on the evolutionary relationship of canids over the past 40 million years. Tedford was a resident of

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at the time of his death on July 15, 2011, having earlier lived in nearby Cresskill. After suffering from colon cancer, his death followed a skull fracture that resulted from an accidental fall in his home. For his work on tertiary mammals uncovered at the

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh) Riversleigh World Heritage Area is Australia's most famous fossil location, recognised for the series of well preserved fossils deposited from the Late Oligocene to more recent geological periods. The fossiliferous limestone system is located ...

, he was commemorated in the epithet of an

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

microbat species '' Rhinonicteris tedfordi''.

Publications

*Phylogenetic systematics of the North American fossil Caninae (Carnivora, Canidae) 200

* Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. Xiaoming Wang and Richard H. Tedford,
Phylogenetic systematics of the Borophaginae (Carnivora, Canidae)
/ Xiaoming Wang, Richard H. Tedford, Beryl E. Taylor. New York : American Museum of Natural History, c1999. *The terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene transition in North America, 433–452. New York: Cambridge University Press, Wang, X.-M., and R.H. Tedford. 1996. Canidae. In D.R. Prothero and R.J. Emry (editors)
Ancestry: evolutionary history, molecular systematics, and evolutionary ecology of Canidae
The biology and conservation of wild canids. New York: Oxford University Press, Wang, X.-M., R.H. Tedford, B. Van Valkenburgh, and R.K. Wayne. 2004.
Review of some Carnivora (Mammalia) from the Thomas Farm local fauna (Hemingfordian, Gilchrist County, Florida)
by Richard H. Tedford, American Museum of Natural History, 1976 Late Cenozoic Yushe Basin, Shanxi Province, China: Geology and Fossil Mammals, Richard Tedford, Zhan-Xiang Qiu, Lawrence Flynn 2012

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tedford, Richard H. American paleontologists People associated with the American Museum of Natural History 1929 births 2011 deaths Accidental deaths from falls People from Cresskill, New Jersey People from Demarest, New Jersey People from Encino, Los Angeles University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Presidents of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology