Pierre-Médard Diard (1794–1863) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
naturalistNatural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards the observational than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research that is published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, Natural history is the systematic...
and explorer.
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Pierre-Médard Diard (1794–1863) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
naturalistNatural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards the observational than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research that is published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, Natural history is the systematic...
and explorer.
Diard travelled in the East Indies between 1827 and 1848. He collected a number of natural history specimens, some of which were sent back the
Coenraad Jacob TemminckCoenraad Jacob Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist.Temminck was the first director of the National Natural History Museum at Leiden from 1820 until his death. His Manuel d'ornithologie, ou Tableau systematique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe was the standard work on European birds...
at
LeidenLeiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants. It is located on the Old Rhine, close to the cities...
. He was an early explorer and also helped contribute with the early Roman Catholic missionaries in New France.
Diard is commemorated in the names of a number of animals, including the following:
- Hyllus diardi, a spider
Spiders are air-breathing chelicerate arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae modified into fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
- Macronota diardi, a beetle
Beetles are the group of insects with the largest number of known species. They are classified in the order Coleoptera , which contains more described species than in any other order in the animal kingdom, constituting about 25% of all known life-forms...
- Carineta diardi, a very colourful cicada
A cicada is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many remain unclassified...
- Sewellia diardi, a fish
- Typhlops diardi, a blind snake
- Siamese Fireback, Lophura diardi
- Diard's Trogon, Harpactes diardii
- Black-bellied Malkoha, Phaenicophaeus diardi
- Bornean Clouded Leopard, Neofelis diardi
He also collected the first specimen of a
crocodileA crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...
Crocodylus raninus from
BruneiBrunei , officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace , is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia...
.