Cyril Walker (palaeontologist)

Cyril Alexander Walker (8 February 1939 – 6 May 2009) was a British palaeontologist, curator of fossil birds in the Natural History Museum. He was also interested in fossil turtles.^[1]

Walker joined the Museum in 1958 and spent his entire career there, becoming curator in 1985.^[1]

Walker's most noteworthy finding was his recognition of a new subclass of fossils birds, the Enantiornithes.^[1]

Together with David Ward, he co-authored a best selling^[2] book, Smithsonian Handbook of Fossils. He has also contributed to many other books, including Garden Birds,^[3] Field Guide to British Birds, Birds of the World, Nature Notebooks,^[4] and others.

An unidentified moa bone of unknown origin and locality, donated by Dr. C. Walker to ornithologist Zlatozar Boev in 1986, was later identified as the little bush moa (Anomalopteryx didiformis).^[5] It is the only specimen of Dinornithiformes in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.

References

1. "Former NHM Curator Cyril Walker Passed Away May 6 " 2010-07-26 at the Wayback Machine, an obituary at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology website
2. "Megalodon: Hunting the Hunter", by Mark Renz, p. viii
3. Proctor, Noble S.; Walker, Cyril Alexander; Parmenter, Tim (1986). Garden Birds: How to Attract Birds to Your Garden. ISBN 9780878575923.
4. From the synopsis 2011-04-04 at the Wayback Machine of the book, Cyril Walker, David Ward Fossils : Smithsonian Handbook, ISBN 0-7894-8984-8 (2002, paperback, revisited), ISBN 1-56458-074-1 (1992, 1st edition)
5. 1.Boev, Z. 2018. A specimen of little bush moa Anomalopteryx didiformis (Owen, 1844), Emeidae Bonaparte, 1854 from the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia. – Historia naturalis bulgarica, 32: 3-5.