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Tedford, Richard H.

 Person

Biographical Note

Richard Hall Tedford (1929-2011) was appointed curator in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History in 1969. He came to the museum in 1966 and served as Chair of Vertebrate Paleontology between 1976-1982 and 1989-1996. Tedford later became Curator Emeritus. He was an expert in carnivore evolution, particularly that of the Canidae family. Other areas of expertise included Australian mammals and biostratigraphy.

Growing up in Encino, California, Tedford spent his teenage years collecting fossils in the Mojave Desert. He received his Bachelors in Chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles and was a Fullbright scholar at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum. Following his Fullbright, Tedford earned his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. His original work in Australia focused on kangaroos and other marsupials. Over time, he transitioned to work on the Canidae family. He served as Professor of Geology and Paleontology at the University of California at Riverside.

Selected Bibliography

Tedford, Richard H. A Review of the Macropodid Genus Sthenurus. University of California Press, 1966.

Tedford, Richard H. The Fossil Macropodidae from Lake Menindee, New South Wales. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, 1960.

Tedford, Richard H., Ruben A. Stirton and Michael O. Woodburne. Australian Tertiary Deposits Containing Terrestrial Mammals. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.

Tedford, Richard H. and Xiaoming Wang. Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. New York City: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Sources

(1) New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3NOugdc

(2) Obituary, North Jersey. https://web.archive.org/web/20110821235320/http://www.northjersey.com/obituaries/famous/125936023_Richard_H__Tedford__82__paleontologist_and_author.html

(3) Tedford, Richard H., AMNH Authority File. https://data.library.amnh.org/archives-authorities/id/amnhp_1002069

Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:

Richard H. Tedford papers

 Collection
Identifier: VPA 130
Scope and Contents

Richard H. Tedford's correspondence. In 1994, Tedford cleared his office files of early correspondence through 1985 and deposited them in the archives. They have been processed and inventoried, keeping the original order. Boxes 1- 16 are correspondence and organized alphabetically. There are additional materials dating from post-1994 to 2002.

Dates: 1951-2002