Reginald Walter Hooley (5 September 1865 – 5 May 1923) was a businessman and amateur

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

, collecting on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

. He is probably best remembered for describing the dinosaur ''Iguanodon atherfieldensis'', now ''

Mantellisaurus ''Mantellisaurus'' is a genus of iguanodontian dinosaur that lived in the Barremian and early Aptian ages of the Early Cretaceous Period of Europe. Its remains are known from Belgium (Bernissart), England, Spain and Germany. The type species, ty ...

.''

Biography

Reginald Hooley was born on 5 September 1865 in

Southampton Southampton is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. It is located approximately southwest of London, west of Portsmouth, and southeast of Salisbury. Southampton had a population of 253, ...

, the son of William Hooley, a wealthy

gentleman ''Gentleman'' (Old French: ''gentilz hom'', gentle + man; abbreviated ''gent.'') is a term for a chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man. Originally, ''gentleman'' was the lowest rank of the landed gentry of England, ranking below an esquire ...

. In 1889 R.W. Hooley began to work for ''Godrich & Petman'', wine merchants, and later in life became managing director of that firm. Living in

Portswood Portswood is a suburb and electoral ward of Southampton, England. The suburb lies to the north-north-east of the city centre and is bounded by (clockwise from west) Freemantle, Highfield, Swaythling, St. Denys and Bevois Valley. Portswood ...

, in 1912 he married E.E. Holden and moved to Winchester. In 1913 he was elected a member of the Winchester city council. Hooley was a member of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society at

Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...

from 1890. He was one of the founders of the Isle of Wight Natural History and Archaeological Society. He was an honorary

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

of the Winchester Museum between 1918 and 1923.

Isle of Wight

Hooley made regular visits to the

and found hundreds of fossils. Hooley made his most famous finds in 1889 and 1914 when two iguanodontid skeletons were exposed by erosion at the cliffs. In 1904 the remains of "Ornithodesmus" were uncovered by a cliff fall. Several fossil specimens were included in fourteen published scientific papers, starting in 1900. He described remains of many

turtle Turtles are reptiles of the order (biology), order Testudines, characterized by a special turtle shell, shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Crypt ...

s, and named the

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

'' Iguanodon atherfieldensis'' and the

pterosaur Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

Ornithodesmus latidens ''Istiodactylus'' is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 120 million years ago. The first fossil was discovered on the English Isle of Wight in 1887, and in 1901 became the holotype specimen of a new species ...

''.

Legacy

After Hooley's death, the paper naming ''Iguanodon atherfieldensis'' was posthumously published and most of the ''Hooley Collection'', over 1330 specimens, was acquired in 1924 by the

British Museum of Natural History The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (Lo ...

which displays the iguanodontid skeletons in the Dinosaur Hall.T.A. Getty & M.D. Crane, 1975, "An Historical Account of the Palaeontological Collections found by R. W. Hooley (1865-1923)", ''Newsletter of the Geological Curators Group'', 4 (September 1975): 170-179 In 1926 the extinct plant '' Hooleya'' was named after him.

References

English palaeontologists 1865 births 1923 deaths Amateur paleontologists {{paleontologist-stub