William Plane Pycraft
Encyclopedia
William Plane Pycraft was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 osteologist.

Pycraft was born on 13 January 1868 in Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth, often known to locals as Yarmouth, is a coastal town in Norfolk, England. It is at the mouth of the River Yare, east of Norwich.It has been a seaside resort since 1760, and is the gateway from the Norfolk Broads to the sea...

 in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 the elder son of William John Pycraft and Margaret Fiddes Pycraft (née Blake). His father was in the Merchant Navy and drowned at Llanelli on 14 August 1868 when William was only 8 months old. His mother remarried Clement Watson, a Butcher on 14 January 1872 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. In 1891 Pycraft was a Museum Assistant to Montague Browne, the Curator of the Town Museum in Leicester. In 1892 Pycraft became assistant to Edwin Ray Lankester, and in 1898 moved with Lankester to the staff of the Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

. He married Lucy Agnes Shee, daughter of Jeremiah Dunlay Shee in 1899 in Chelsea. In 1907 Pycraft took charge of osteology
Osteology
Osteology is the scientific study of bones. A subdiscipline of anatomy, anthropology, and archeology, osteology is a detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, morphology, function, disease, pathology, the process of ossification , the resistance and hardness of bones , etc...

at the museum.

Pycraft wrote many articles and books on natural history, including The Story of Bird-Life (1900), The Story of Fish-Life (1901), The Story of Reptile Life (1905), The British Museum of Natural History (1910), A History of Birds (1910), The Infancy of Animals (1912), The Courtship of Animals (1913), Birds in Flight (1922), Camouflage in Nature (1925) and Birds of Great Britain and their Natural History (1934).

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