Item 0009 - Letter, 20 August 1896

Charles William Andrews was born on October 30, 1866, in Hampstead, Middlesex, England.

He was a British paleontologist and a curator of the British Museum. He graduated from the University of London and began his career as a schoolmaster. He was, however, always deeply interested in biological and geological science. In 1892, he became a successful candidate in a competitive examination for an assistantship in the Department of Geology in the British Museum (Natural History). His first concerns were with fossil birds, and he described Aepyornis titan, the extinct "Elephant Bird" of Madagascar (1894). He noticed the connections among widely separated flightless rails of Mauritius, the Chatham Islands and New Zealand and deduced that their flightless character had independently evolved on the spot. In 1900, he received the degree of D.Sc. in the University of London as a recognition of the value of his original research. Alfred Nicholson Leeds' gifts of Jurassic marine reptiles from the Oxford Clay of Peterborough to the British Museum elicited his interest in plesiosaurs and other sea reptiles, which culminated in a catalogue of the Leeds collection at the British Museum (2 vols., 1910-13). His last posthumously published paper concerned the skin impressions and other soft structures preserved in an ichthyosaur paddle from Leicestershire. In 1897, he was selected to spend several months at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean to inspect it before the phosphate mining compromised its natural history. The results were published by the British Museum in 1900. After 1900, his health began slowly to fail. He was sent to spend winter months in Egypt, where he joined Beadnell of the Geological Survey of Egypt, inspecting fossils of freshwater fishes in the Fayoum. Andrews noticed mammalian fauna not previously detected and published Moeritherium and an early elephant, Palaeomastodon, followed by his Descriptive Catalogue. In 1916, he was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an active member of the Zoological Society.

He died on May 25, 1924.