24 Facts About Hildegarde Howard

Hildegarde Howard was an American pioneer in paleornithology.

Hildegarde Howard was mentored by the famous ornithologist, Joseph Grinnell, at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and in avian paleontology.

Hildegarde Howard was well known for her discoveries in the La Brea Tar Pits, among them the Rancho La Brea eagles.

Hildegarde Howard discovered and described Pleistocene flightless waterfowl at the prehistoric Ballona wetlands of coastal Los Angeles County at Playa del Rey.

In 1953, Howard became the third woman to be awarded the Brewster Medal.

Hildegarde Howard was the first woman president of the Southern California Academy of Sciences.

Hildegarde Howard was born in Washington, DC, and moved with her parents to Los Angeles in 1906; her father was a scriptwriter and her mother a musician and composer.

In 1920 Hildegarde Howard commenced her studies at the Southern Branch of the University of California.

That same year, Hildegarde Howard joined the scientific staff of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History part-time; her work there on the extinct turkey Parapavo californicus was credited towards her master's degree, which was received in 1926 at Berkeley.

In 1929 Hildegarde Howard returned to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and she held a permanent position there as a curator.

Hildegarde Howard died on 28 February 1998 at her home in California, not long before her 97th birthday.

Hildegarde Howard published some 150 scientific papers over the course of her career.

Hildegarde Howard was allowed to research a coracoid bone discovered for a species of bird not yet known by the public record.

Hildegarde Howard concluded through previous evidence and modern avians that the bird was a previously unknown species of water bird by the shape of the shoulder and chest bone.

Hildegarde Howard conducted an experiment in which she took wasps from their home ecosystem and brought them to a greenhouse to see how they would take to the conditions of isolation and whether or not they would nest in that environment.

Hildegarde Howard's diagrams were eventually phased out after Nomina Anatomica Avium was published in 1997.

Hildegarde Howard detailed, named and labelled a baseline for the skeletal makeup of all birds.

Hildegarde Howard compared two studies regarding the Pleistocene animals of the Rancho La Brea region.

The entry detailed this evidence; however, Hildegarde Howard did not conclude that this was the regeneration of the bones, since it had never been recorded before.

Hildegarde Howard kept the possibility open because of the close relation between reptiles and birds, since reptiles have the ability to regenerate.

Hildegarde Howard finds that the fossils resemble closest to Strix even though it is larger than either species that could be found in North America of the genus.

Hildegarde Howard goes into a full-depth investigation along with evidence filled with measurements and comparisons and finally comes to the conclusion that the bones found in the exhibit were of a new species, which is named the Strix Brea.

Hildegarde Howard published her findings in The Condor in 1932, naming the entry 'A New Species of Owl from the Pleistocene of Rancho La Brea, California'.

Hence, Hildegarde Howard proposed that this specimen be classified as a new species called the Geococcyx conklingi.