William More Gabb: California’s First State Paleontologist

Although he lived only 39 years (1839–1878), he was a very productive researcher/scholar. Gabb introduced 1163 fossil taxa and authored 40 papers. For an annotated catalog of all of the fossil invertebrates described by, and named for Gabb, as well as a complete list of his publications, see Groves and Squires (2018).

Gabb was born in Philadelphia, and he received his education there, where he was influenced by Timothy Conrad, the curator of the Museum of Academy of the Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. In 1862, two years after the Geological Survey of California was formed, Gabb was hired to survey California’s geology. On his first assignment, he and his colleagues traveled via horseback, from San Francisco southward to northern Los Angeles County, in order to study the details of the paleontology of this region. Gabb’s (1864a, 1864b) reports were first papers on the Paleontology of California fossils. 

In 1869, Gabb left the Geological Survey of California, and for the next few years visited and did paleontologic work on Tertiary molluscan fossils, as well as natural history work on animals he found in the jungles, in the Amazon region of Peru and in Central America.  Savage (1970) wrote an interesting account of his work in Costa Rica. While in Costa Rica, he contracted a deadly form of malaria. For the next five years, his health deteriorated, and in May 1878, his short but scholarly career ended, when he died in Philadelphia. 

References Cited:

Gabb, W.M. 1864a. Description of the Triassic fossils of California and their adjacent territories. In Palaeontology of California. Geological Survey of California, v. 1, section 1, pp. 19–35, pls. 3-6.

Gabb, W.M. 1864a. Description of the Tertiary invertebrate fossils and synopsis of the Tertiary fossils of California. In Palaeontology of Califoria, Geological Survey of California, v. 2, section. 1, pp. 1-124, plates 1-18.

Groves, L.T. and R.L. Squires. 2018. Annotated catalog of the fossil invertebrates described by, and named for, William More Gabb (1839–1878). Zootaxa 4534 (1):1–150.  <http.www.mapress.com/j/zt/>

Savage, J.M. 1970. On the trail of the golden frog: with Warszewicz and Gabb in Central America. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Fourth Series, 38:273–280.

 Squires, R.L. 1999. William More Gabb First Paleontologist of the Geological Survey of California. California Geology, July/August 1999:11–14.