Reginald Innes Pocock

Reginald Innes Pocock, (4 March 1863 – 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist. He was associated with the Natural History Museum, London and the London Zoo. He was a noted expert on the taxonomy of Arachnida and Myriapoda, and also made extensive studies of mammals, especially those from India. He helped pioneer external morphology as a means of classifying mammals.

Early life Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol on 4 March 1863. He was the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. His maternal grandfather was James Cowles Prichard, a physician and ethnologist. His great grandfather was marine artist Captain Nicholas Pocock. He also played lawn tennis and lacrosse, and competed in the long jump and short distance running.

While with the museum, Pocock published 200 papers, featuring his illustrations. He examined the collections made by John Anderson in 1887. He examined scorpions from India and collections were made by H. M. Phipson and Edgar Thurston for him. This led to a volume for the Fauna of British India in 1888. He worked on a comprehensive study of the solifuges of India and Ceylon which was published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.

In 1929, he proposed the family Nandiniidae, with the genus Nandinia as its sole member.

In 1897, Pocock found a Quagga specimen in the Bristal Museum; he studied this extinct mammal and concluded that it was related to the zebra. He then helped Philip. Sclater, the secretary of the Zoological Society of London, finish Book of Antelopes. When he died, Pocock was working on the Catalogue of the Felidae in the British Museum and a third volume of The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma; the latter was too incomplete for publication. based on the nostril separation and established felid phylogenetic relationships; both are still in use.

Selected works

Pocock, R. I. (July 1897). "The Species and Subspecies of Zebras". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 6. 20: 33–52.

. Pocock, R.I. (July 1932). "The Leopards of Africa". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London''. pp. 543–591. .