The hornless rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus inermis Lesson, 1836) discovered by Lamare-Picquot in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh in 1828, with notes on the history of his Asian collections

Abstract

The French pharmacist and explorer Christoph-Augustin Lamare-Picquot (1785–1873) was in South Asia during 1826–1829 to collect ethnographical, anthropological, zoological and botanical specimens. He made an excursion to the Sundarbans (the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta) of Bangladesh, where on 17 November 1828 his team shot a female rhinoceros and caught her young one the next day, just south of Khulna. Both animals were completely hornless. He returned to France in the spring of 1830, where his zoological specimens were assessed by Georges Cuvier, and his other collections relating to ethnography by other scholars. All recommended purchase by the French Government, but circumstances did not allow this. A few animals were described by scientists connected with the Natural History Museum in Paris. After Lamare-Picquot published an account of the hunting expedition in 1835, the rhinoceros was described as a new species Rhinoceros inermis, by René-Primivère Lesson, first in a supplement to Buffon dated 1836, and not, as accepted until now, in restatements dating from 1838 or later. The main part of the zoological collection was bought by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1836 and integrated in museums in Berlin. Other collections were exhibited as a “Panthéon Indien” in Vienna and Bratislava from 1838, until they were purchased by the Bavarian King Ludwig in 1841, and added to a museum in Munich. The type specimens of R. inermis are still preserved in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. The adult female (ZMB_Mam_1957) was selected as the lectotype.