Peter Charles Howard Pritchard (June 26, 1943 – February 25, 2020) was a leading turtle zoologist. Pritchard was educated at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

and the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

, where he received a Ph.D. and specialized in Zoology. He was most commonly known for his career of almost 40 years for the conservation of turtles. He worked with the World Wildlife Fund, spending four years there before joining Audubon Florida in 1973 as assistant executive director, senior vice president and acting president. In 1997, he founded a turtle conservation organization called the Chelonian Research Institute in

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. Scott A. Thomson, curator of the Chelonian Research Institute notes that the CRI has 14500 tortoise and turtle specimens registered with some 2000 unregistered specimens. The collection comprises 100% of all turtle genera, 86% of all species and 72% of all subspecies - the third largest and most complete collection in the world. Pritchard also travelled to

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for his career, the

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n country that is home to four of the world's seven known

sea turtle Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerh ...

species: the leatherback,

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, hawksbill and the olive ridley. He also named several species of turtle for example '' Mesoclemmys zuliae'' and '' Chitra vandijki''. He also worked with the Arawaks during his turtle conservation experience in Guyana. Along the way, Pritchard's own scholarship has benefited from centuries' worth of tribal turtle knowledge. He has also done extensive study and written books about

alligator snapping turtle The alligator snapping turtle (''Macrochelys temminckii'') is a large species of turtle in the Family (biology), family Chelydridae. They are the largest freshwater turtle in North America. The species is Endemism, endemic to freshwater habitat ...

s and Galapagos tortoises. Pritchard died on February 25, 2020.

Eponyms

Pritchard is honored in the scientific names of three turtles, ''Podocnemis pritchardi'' ,Wood RC (1997). "Turtles". In: Kay RF, Madden RH, Cifelli RL, Flynn JJ (editors). ''Vertebrate Paleontology in the Neotropics. The Miocene Fauna of La Venta, Colombia''. Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution Press. '' Chelodina pritchardi'' and '' Mauremys pritchardi''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Pritchard", pp. 211-212).

References

External links

*Environmental Science Progra

Chelonian Research Institute official website of the Chelonian Research Institute in Oviedo, FL
*TIME.com: Heroes of the Plane

*Intervie

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pritchard, Peter 1943 births 21st-century American zoologists American herpetologists University of Florida College of Agricultural and Life Sciences alumni 2020 deaths English emigrants to the United States People from Oviedo, Florida

Eponyms

References

Further reading

External links