Biographies

Hildegarde Howard

Hildegarde Howard at the time of her retirement in 1961.

Hildegarde Howard was one of the world's foremost authorities on fossil birds. She was born April 3, 1901 in Washington D.C. In 1906 she moved to Los Angeles with her parents. Her father was a writer who wrote and edited scripts for movies. Her mother was a musician and composer.

In 1920 she began attending UCLA (then called the Southern Branch of the University of California). She hadn't given the least bit of thought to a career in biology or paleontology. But that all changed when she took her first biology class. Her instructor, Miss Pirie Davidson, made the subject so interesting that Miss Howard became immersed in biology studies and was soon working as a laboratory assistant for the class. The following year Miss Davidson helped Miss Howard obtain a part time job working for paleontologist Chester Stock sorting bones from the La Brea Tar Pits at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art. In 1922 she went to U.C. Berkeley to finish her degree since UCLA was then a two-year school. There she began taking courses in the paleontology department.

After graduating in 1924 she went to work for Dr. Loye Miller, Chairman of the UCLA biology Department and an authority on fossil birds.Part of her job was to conduct research on the extinct California Turkey, Meleagris (=Paraparvo) californicus, from Rancho La Brea. The research became the subject of her first major publication and firmly launched her toward a career in avian paleontology. The project also had another benefit. It was while sorting fossil bones in the museum basement that she met Anson Wylde, another bone sorter. The two were married in 1930, and he eventually became Chief of Exhibits at the museum.

Hildegarde Howard returned to Berkeley where she received her master's degree in 1926 and her Ph.D. in 1928. Her dissertation, "The Avifauna of Emoryville Shellmound," was the epitome of careful comparative research and became one of her most popular works. It is still widely consulted today, partly because of the detailed drawings illustrating the anatomy of bird bones. She set forth the standardized terminology that remains in use today.

In 1928 she began working full time at the museum (today called the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County), eventually becoming Chief Curator of Science. Over the years, much of her research continued to focus on Rancho La Brea. From the incredible abundance of bird fossils there she learned early in her career the value of a large sample and the degree of variability within a species. At most fossil localities, bird species are known from one or two bones or pieces of bones. By contrast, for her turkey study she examined 800 bones. Today, the entire avian collection from Rancho La Brea numbers some 300,000 specimens. Besides the California Turkey, she also published reports on the eagles and eagle-like vultures, a wood ibis, a new species of owl and caracara, and the La Brea avifauna in general. She and Chester Stock also lobbied public officials for the proper preservation of the site during periods when this was not always assured.

Howard conducted studies of birds from several other Pleistocene localities in Western North America including Fossil Lake, Oregon, marine deposits on the Channel Islands, and cave deposits from Nevada and New Mexico. Dr. Howard also studied the Tertiary marine birds of southern California. Of recurring interest were the flightless diving auks of the genus Mancallaand Praemancalla.Sometimes called the Lucus Auk, Mancallawas penguin-like and about a foot tall. Its bones were first discovered in southern California rocks but are today known from Miocene deposits in Central California as well.

In 1957 she described the first "toothed" bird from North America. This remarkable fossil consists of a complete skeleton with feather impressions on opposing slabs of shale. The fossil is from the Miocene Monterey Formation and was unearthed at the G. Antolini & Sons quarry in Santa Barbara County. Howard named it Osteodontornis- Latin for "bony-toothed bird." The teeth are not true teeth but tooth-like projections of bone. Osteodontorniswas albatross-like in proportions but much larger. It had a wingspan of between 14 an 16 feet, making it one of the largest flying birds. Just imagine these gigantic birds swooping down from the sky and snatching large fish from the surface of the sea. Obviously, their "toothy" beaks were an advantage in snagging slippery prey. The fossil is still displayed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

In addition to her technical publications, Hildegarde Howard also wrote a number of popular articles, informing the public about interesting fossils she and others were studying. In her popular booklet, Fossil Birds, she summarized the fossil history of birds, with special reference to Rancho La Brea and California.

Dr. Howard became a scientist of international renown, highly respected by her peers, and was a member of several paleontological, ornithological, and geological societies. Incredibly, she was the first scientist to specialize solely in the study of fossil birds. Although she "retired" in 1961, she continued her research work for another thirty years. She died in 1998, just one month shy of her 97th birthday.

By Frank Perry

Timothy Abbott Conrad

It is not enough for me to just know the name of a fossil. I also like to know what the name means, why it was given a certain name, and who named it. I find it easier to remember a name if there is a story associated with it. This is the story of a paleontologist who, ironically, had trouble remembering names.

Anyone interested in West Coast mollusks, either modern or fossil, will soon come across the name Timothy Conrad. Back in the mid 1800s he named many of the common mollusks found in California deposits of the Tertiary. These include the ark clam, Anadara trilineata,the giant oyster, Ostrea titan,and the giant slipper shell, Crepidula princeps,to name just a few. Of local interest, the fossil gaper clam, Tresus pajaroanus,was named by Conrad in 1857 from a specimen collected at "Pajaro River, Santa Cruz."

So just who was Conrad? It turns out that he is not an easy fellow to track down. I never did find a published photo of him. After a good deal of hunting, however, I located a couple of biographical sketches that begin to flesh out the life of this intriguing character.

Timothy Abbott Conrad was born in Burlington County, New Jersey, in 1803, the eldest son of Solomon White Conrad and Elizabeth Abbott. His father was a Quaker minister, owned a publishing business, and was active in scientific circles. The elder Conrad became a Professor of Botany at the University of Pennsylvania and was librarian for the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.

Young Timothy grew up in a scientific atmosphere and soon took to nature study like a duck to water. While still in his early teens he started his own little "Academy of Science" with his friends. His parents sent him to the best schools, but he was largely self-taught with regard to the higher levels of knowledge. He took it upon himself to learn Latin, Greek, and French without the help of a teacher.

When his father died in 1831, Conrad took over the publishing business for a short time but soon left to pursue a career as a natural scientist. Timothy Conrad was elected a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, while still in his twenties and in 1835 became one of three honorary curators there. Paying jobs in the natural sciences were scarce in those days and Conrad suffered financially throughout his life. He worked for a time as paleontologist for the New York State Geological Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, and the North Carolina Geological Survey.

Despite Conrad's apparent lack of a college education, he became a prolific worker in paleontology, describing hundreds of species. He mostly worked on mollusks. These ranged in age from Paleozoic to Recent and were sent to him by collectors around the United States and other parts of the Americas. He recognized the importance of the geologic context of fossils and was the first to attempt to describe and date some of the Tertiary formations of North America based on fossils. The fossils he named from California were sent to him by explorers with the railroad surveys of the middle 1800s.

Conrad's work was mostly descriptive. He developed no grand theories, or if he did, he did not write them down. After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,Conrad often took part in lively discussions among scientists on the merits of the theory. Conrad was opposed to evolution and predicted that Darwin's "wild speculations" would soon be forgotten. Conrad believed that each geological time period came to a complete close and that God created all new life at the beginning of each new period. Few others shared such views.

Later workers in paleontology grew to be highly critical of Conrad, branding him absent-minded or just plain careless. At his desk, always piled high with books, fossils, and papers, fossil collections became mixed and specimens became separated from their labels. Some of his slips and errors were so obvious that they seem unpardonable, said one writer. He had such a poor memory that he redescribed his own species, giving them names for a second time. Even Conrad realized in later years that his memory was failing. In a letter to F. B. Meek, dated July 1863, he wrote: "I go on Monday to help H--- ferret out my skulking species of Palaeozoic shells. May the recording angel help me! God and I knew them once, and the Almighty may know still. A man's memory is no part of his soul."

It has been written that Conrad did not even write down the data for his specimens in record books, but this is probably not true. In the 1950s one of his record books turned up in archives at the Smithsonian. Others may have been lost when a fire destroyed his nephew's library.

Conrad's nephew, Charles Conrad Abbott, added further color to his uncle's life in an 1895 biographical sketch. He described his uncle as short, thin, and homely. Conrad himself wrote in a poem, "I hold Father Time from his villainous wrinkling; Of features that never had graces to spare." Conrad shunned public speaking, but had a keen sense of humor and was an inveterate punster.

Apparently Conrad's other great love was poetry. He published his first poem in 1828 and his last in 1874, three years before he died. While his memory was poor on scientific matters, it was remarkably good with regard to poems. During walks in the woods he would recite out loud long passages from his favorite authors. His nephew compared him to Thoreau.

Paleontologist Ellen Moore delved more extensively into Timothy Conrad's life and accomplishments than anybody else around today, so it is fitting to end with her conclusions about Conrad: "Perhaps many of us are loathe to recognize the human imperfections of eminent men, preferring rather to eulogize them as somehow superhuman. In doing this we do these men great injustice, for how simple it would be for them to attain success if they were truly superhuman, and how enormously difficult if they were not only very human but had the special frailties of Conrad. The contributions made to science by Conrad are remarkable in content, in the accuracy of determinations in relation to their times, and in perception. And they were done almost singlehandedly, even to the laborious etching of plates on stone. These points must always be held in mind when criticizing Conrad's errors and his often all to brief descriptions of species."

By Frank Perry

References:

Abbott, Charles Conrad. 1895. Timothy Abbott Conrad. Popular Science Monthly,v. 47, pp. 257-263.

Moore, Ellen James. 1962. Conrad's Cenozoic fossil marine mollusk type specimens at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,v. 114, no. 2., pp. 23-120.

David Starr Jordan

David Starr Jordan in 1874

In researching these biographical sketches, it is sometimes difficult to find enough material to flesh-out the personalities. Often, it seems, little is known about the people behind the fossils. With David Starr Jordan, just the opposite is true. His two volume autobiography, with the immodest title The Days of a Man,comprises 1,615 pages. I must confess I did not read every word of it in order to write this essay, but his insights and anecdotes make for interesting reading, even though he wrote it 80 years ago. He rubbed elbows with some of the greats of 19th century natural science, and many of his experiences in life have a familiar ring.

David Starr Jordan was born near Gainesville, New York, January 19, 1851. During his childhood Jordan had a keen interest in natural history, especially astronomy and botany (the former in part because of his middle name). His parents left the Baptist Church around the time of their marriage and became Universalists. His family's strict religious habits influenced Jordan all his life. He abstained from tobacco (considered it offensive to others) and avoided alcohol (said it forced the nervous system to lie). With regard to playing cards, "I never touched them until after leaving college." Mostly it was because he had better things to do.

Jordan won a scholarship to Cornell in 1869. The following year women were admitted to the college for the first time, including Jordan's sister, Mary. "For college men there is no other influence so wholesome as that of educated women," he wrote, "and there exist no conditions more favorable for the choice of a life mate than are found in a coeducational institution." Jordan spoke from personal experience. His first wife, Susan Bowen Jordan, was trained as a botanist. She died in 1885 leaving him with three children. In 1887 he met and married Jessie Knight, a Cornell student. They also had three children. Jordan's close-up vision was never great, and in later years Jessie would read scientific papers out loud to him and edit his manuscripts.

As a professor at Lombard and Butler universities and later the University of Indiana, Jordan lectured on geology, botany, entomology, invertebrates, marine zoology, ornithology, ichthyology, evolution, and on languages such as German, French, and Norwegian. He believed in first learning directly from the animals and plants and afterwards from books. In the summer of 1878 he took 15 students (12 men and 3 women) on a month-long 550 mile "nature walk." They hiked though Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and northern Georgia, covering about 15 miles per day and only occasionally taking the train. One of those on the hike was Barton Warren Evermann, who described Jordan as a tall, unassuming, even-tempered man, witty and humorous at times, yet always very dignified. He was a diligent worker with an incredible memory.

Jordan tried to keep an open mind on religious and scientific matters. In the 1800s nearly all American colleges had close ties to religious faiths. Jordan studied under the great Louis Agassiz, who rejected Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. But Jordan, like Agassiz's other students, eventually grew to accept that species changed over time. While Jordan admired and respected Darwin's incredible insight, Jordan was gradually converted by his own observations. "I went over to the evolutionists with the grace of a cat the boy 'leads' by its tail across the carpet," he said.

In 1891, Jordan was appointed first president of the new Stanford University. Tuition was free at first, he recalled, and board and room were made available at cost. An innovative educator, Jordan believed in giving students more freedom to select subjects for study. He argued that modern languages were no less important than dead ones (such as Latin) and that their cultural value should be recognized. Under his system, a student's major professor also became that student's counselor and guide.

Although Jordan was a Renaissance man, one particular interest stood far above all the rest. That was the study of fishes. I recall a paleontologist colleague of mine once referring to Jordan as "Mr. Fish." It was an apt title although nobody would have dared call him that while he was alive. For a period of about 30 years, Jordan was America's premier ichthyologist. He published descriptions of numerous new species from many parts of the world. One of the most famous was the bizarre Goblin Shark from Japan. He also published catalogs on fishes of North America, middle America, Hawaii, and Samoa. For his massive report on the genera of fishes of the world, he gathered information on 7,800 names.

Jordan also took an interest in fossil fishes, including sharks. In the early 1900s Jordan began studies of fossil fish remains recently discovered in southern California. This led to the publishing of several papers describing these fossils. One article, titled "A Miocene Catastrophe," described entire schools of herring (Xyne grex) fossilized in the diatomite beds near Lompoc, California. Jordan also described several species of fossil sharks from California and co-authored with Stanford student Harold Hannibal a report on the fossil sharks and rays of the Pacific Coast.

Jordan received many accolades during his long career. In 1879 an English naturalist, William Neale Lockington, named the flounder, Eopsetta jordani,after him, the first of many such honors. Jordan later wrote, "This is the flounder called "English Sole" by the local [California] fishermen, a toothsome creature resembling the true sole of Europe--Solea solea--in flavor, but in no other respect,�not being a sole at all, and not English either." Nor is it "jordani"today, that name having been replaced by another.

Other namesakes, however, have survived. The name "Jordan's sea cow," Dusisiren jordani,remains very much alive, even if the animal has been dead for ten million years. Several fossil skeletons of this sea cow have been unearthed in the Monterey Bay area, and a cast of one hangs from the ceiling of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.

More important than names, however, was David Starr Jordan's philosophy of teaching, which influences students to this very day. Jordan died in 1931 at age 80, but his legacies remain--in ichthyology, paleontology, and in education.

By Frank Perry

References:

Evermann, Barton Warren. 1930. David Star Jordan, the Man. Copeia,1930, no. 4, pp. 93-105.

Evermann, Barton Warren. 1931. Obituary: David Starr Jordan. Science,v. 74 (no. 1918), pp. 327-329 (October 2).

Jordan, David Starr. 1922. The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher, and Minor Prophet of Democracy.New York: World Book Company.

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Laura J. F. Hecox

Laura J. F. Hecox 1854-1919
(Photo courtesy of the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz)

Unlike most of the people profiled in this series, Miss Laura Hecox was not a famous paleontologist. But her contributions to the study of fossils and the natural sciences here in the Monterey Bay area were significant. She planted the seeds of a public education program that continues to this day.

Laura Hecox was born in Santa Cruz January 29, 1854. Her parents and four of her older siblings had come to California overland by wagon train in 1846. They arrived in Soquel in the Spring of 1847 where they lived in a small cabin while her father, Adna Hecox, set up a saw mill. Mr. Hecox later worked as a carpenter and farmer, helped established the local Methodist Church and temperance society, and held several offices in local government. In 1869 he was appointed first keeper of the Santa Cruz lighthouse. In December of that year Mr. Hecox, his wife Margaret, and family (including fifteen-year-old Laura) moved into the new lighthouse, located near the site of the present beacon on West Cliff Drive.

According to one account, Laura suffered a bad fall as a child and was a long time in recovering. She began collecting shells and other marine life along local beaches, partly as therapy to help her regain her physical and mental faculties. Dr. Charles Lewis Anderson, a local physician and naturalist, gave her books to identify her finds, and soon she became absorbed in scientific studies. Had she been born a hundred years later, she probably would have studied marine biology at one of the several marine laboratories that now border Monterey Bay, but there were no such institutions in those days, nor were there any local colleges or universities. She was mostly self-taught.

Laura's collections grew and grew until one entire room at the lighthouse was converted into a private nature museum. The lighthouse was, by law, open to the public during certain hours each week, so several thousand people got to tour the museum each year while seeing the lighthouse.

Caroline Dall, feminist reformer and writer from the East (and mother of famed malacologist William Healey Dall), visited Lighthouse Point in 1880:

There Miss Hecox came to meet us. She is the daughter of the keeper, a woman of about twenty-eight years old. . . .She is quite an authority [on seashells] on this coast, and very useful to many more-famous collectors by exchanging or forwarding what they want. Through the kindness of such persons she has accumulated a pretty museum, which her father has been proud to set up. It is the only trace of luxury in the simple house. . . . She has a sweet, frank, intelligent face, which makes one forget her misfortune; and the recollection of her useful and busy life, several miles from any town, will always rest in my mind as a pleasant contrast to the lives of many women whom I know, whom nothing short of London or Paris can furnish with occupation.

In 1883, Adna Hecox died and Laura was appointed lighthouse keeper. She had to clean and maintain the oil lamp and lens, and keep the light burning each night from sunset to sunrise. An 1890 newspaper article explained that she was one of twenty women at that time who were employed by the federal government as lighthouse keepers at various locations around the United States. She must have liked the job, for she stayed thirty-three years.

Laura's interests were diverse, to say the least. She collected marine mollusks, crustaceans, bird skins, bird eggs, pressed algae, echinoderms, minerals, fossils, Native American baskets and artifacts, South Sea Island artifacts, and various historical items. She cataloged her specimens, giving them numbers and writing down where each item came from. Scrapbooks kept by her reveal a boundless thirst for knowledge. She saved articles on everything from coin collecting to raising land snails.

Besides her museum at the lighthouse, she also put together educational displays each year for the county fair and occasionally had displays at the Public Library. She donated a large shell collection to the California School for the Deaf, where her nephew was a student and later a teacher. She belonged to several scientific societies and corresponded with many prominent naturalists of that period.

Several published works make special note of her interest in paleontology. Ralph Arnold, paleontologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (see Oct.-Dec. 1997 Bulletin), acknowledged her help in his 1908 report on fossils of the Santa Cruz Mountains published by the Smithsonian Institution. He wrote that her "collection of specimens and interest in natural history has been an inspiration to all who have had the pleasure of her acquaintance." She also received acknowledgment in Arnold's report on the Tertiary and Quaternary Pectens of California,for many years the standard reference work on these important fossils. Besides displays of local fossils, she also kept collections of petrified woods, and of fossil ferns from Illinois (presumably from the famous Mazon Creek locality).

In 1904 she decided to deed her collection to the people of Santa Cruz to establish the first public museum here. The new Santa Cruz Free Library building was completed that year, funded by Andrew Carnegie. The Hecox Museum was established in a basement room of the Library and opened August 21, 1905. At the opening reception, the ever modest lighthouse keeper stated, in a short speech, that she did not feel that she was losing anything in giving the collection but rather was merely taking everyone else into partnership with her in the enjoyment of it.

The Hecox collection moved several times through the years, and gradually other collections were added to it. Eventually it evolved into the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, today located in the Seabright neighborhood of Santa Cruz. The museum continues to offer exhibits, lectures, and special programs to educate the public on the rich natural history of the Monterey Bay region. The museum maintains a growing collection of local fossils and in recent decades has been especially supportive of paleontology through the funding of exhibits and publications. We owe a debt of gratitude to the dedication and foresight of Laura Hecox.

-- Frank Perry