Harry Seeley

Harry Govier Seeley (1839 – 1909) was the British paleontologist who detected that the dinosaurs fell into two great groups, the Saurischians and the Ornithischians, based on the nature of their pelvic bones and joints, and published his results in 1888, from a lecture he had delivered the previous year http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/dino/see1888.htm. The great pioneer paleontologists had been dividing the Dinosauria various ways, depending on the structures of their feet and the form of their teeth. seeley's categories have withstood the test of time— though, ironically, the birds have been found to have descended, not from the "bird-hipped" Ornithischia, but from the "lizard-hipped" Saurischia. He found the two groups so distinct that he also argued for separate origins: not until the 1980s did new techniques of cladistic analysis show that both groups of dinosaurs really did have common ancestors back in the Triassic. Seeley described and named numerous dinosaurs from their fossils in the course of his career.

Related Topics:
Paleontologist - Dinosaur - Saurischia - Ornithischia - Pelvic bones and joints - 1888 - Dinosauria - Cladistic analysis - Triassic - Fossil

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His popular book on Pterosaurs, Dragons of the Air (1901) found that birds and pterosaurs closely parallel. Though his thoughtys that they had a common origin have not proved correct, he upset Richard Owen's characterization of the pterosaurs as cold-blooded, sluggish gliders, and recognized them as warm-blooded active fliers.

Related Topics:
Pterosaur - Richard Owen

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Seeley had been an assistant to Adam Sedgwick at the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, from 1859. He turned down positions both with the British Museum and the Geological Survey of Britain to work on his own. Late in his career he accepted a position at King's College, Cambridge.

Related Topics:
Adam Sedgwick - British Museum - Geological Survey - King's College, Cambridge

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