The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals

P

305 Pallas Pallas’ Long-tongued Bat Glossophaga soricina Pallas, 1766 Pallas’ Mastiff Bat Molossus molossus Pallas, 1766 Pallas’ Tube-nosed Fruit Bat Nyctimene cephalotes Pallas, 1767 Pallas’ Cat Felis manul Pallas, 1776 [Alt. Manul; Syn. Otocolobus manul] Pallas’ Squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus Pallas, 1779 [Alt. Belly-banded Squirrel, Red-bellied Squirrel] Pallas’ Tarsier Tarsius spectrum Pallas, 1779 [Alt. Spectral Tarsier, Eastern Tarsier; Syn. T. tarsier Erxleben, 1777] Pallas’ Pika Ochotona pallasi Gray, 1867 Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811) was a Russian of German extraction, having arrived in Russia in 1767. He was a zoologist and was considered one of the greatest 18th-century naturalists. He was obviously very bright, as he earned his doctorate from the University of Leiden at the age of 19. In 1761 he went to London to study the English hospital system and appears to have been enchanted by the Sussex coast and the countryside in Oxfordshire. The Empress Catherine II summoned him to Russia in 1767 to become the Professor of Natural History at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and to investigate Russia’s natural environment. He was also a geographer and traveler and explored widely in lesser-known areas of Russia. Between 1768 and 1774 he headed an Academy of Sciences expedition that studied many regions of Russia, including southern Siberia, Altai, and the Lake Baikal region. He described many new species of mammals, birds, fish, insects, and fossils, including, in some cases, their longdead bodies preserved in the ice. His works include A Journey through Various Provinces of the Russian State (1771), Flora of Russia (1774), and A History of the Mongolian People and Asian-Russian Fauna (1811), as well as other works on zoology , paleontology, botany, and ethnography. A volcano on the Kurile Islands and a reef off New Guinea were also named in his honor. In 1772 he found a mass of iron weighing 700 kg (1,543 pounds). This turned out to be a meteorite of a new kind and it was named pallasite after him. Pallas is also commemorated in at least 14 bird names, including Pallas’ Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus proregulus and Pallas’ Sandgrouse Syrrhaptes paradoxus. The long-tongued bat is found from Mexico south to Peru and Paraguay, with a subspecies on Jamaica. The mastiff bat has a similar distribution but occurs also on many islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The fruit bat is found in eastern Indonesia (Sulawesi, the Moluccas) and southern New Guinea. The cat is found in steppe and semidesert regions from the Caspian Sea to Kashmir, Mongolia, and central China. The squirrel ranges from northeast India to southern China, Taiwan, Indochina, and the Malay Peninsula. The tarsier is from Sulawesi (formerly Celebes), Indonesia. (Though long known by Pallas’ name spectrum, the species should more correctly be known by Erxleben’s earlier name tarsier.) The pika has a discontinuous distribution in Kazakhstan, the Altai Mountains , Mongolia, and northern China. Palmer Palmer’s Chipmunk Tamias palmeri Merriam, 1897 Dr. Theodore Sherman Palmer (1868–1958) was an American botanist. He started work in 1889 for the U.S. Biological Survey, which P 306 Merriam headed, and worked there for 15 years as Assistant Chief. From 1900 to 1916 he was the Law Enforcement Officer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After his retirement in 1933 he devoted himself to wildlife conservation and to ornithology—he was once Secretary of the American Ornithologists’ Union— as well as to biographic and bibliographic interests. In 1891 he led an expedition to study the flora and fauna of Death Valley. His most important work, written over 20 years and published in 1904, was Index generum mammalium . He was confined to his house for the last 21 years of his life following an accident in which he badly broke a hip. The chipmunk is found only in the Charleston Mountains, southern Nevada, USA. Pan The chimpanzee genus Pan Oken, 1816 [2 species: paniscus and troglodytes] This is another case of primates being named after mythological characters. Pan was, of course, the Greek god of nature. He had the hindquarters and legs of a goat, thus mixing human and animal characteristics. Probably early naturalists viewed chimpanzees and other apes as looking part-human, part-animal. The scientific name of the Bonobo (Pygmy Chimpanzee ) is Pan paniscus, which can be translated as “Pan, the little Pan.” Pandora Yucatan Brown Brocket Mazama pandora Merriam, 1901 In Greek mythology Pandora was the first woman. Zeus ordered the god Hephaestus to...