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Elephants: Past, Present, and Future?

Presented by Wagner Free Institute of Science at Wagner Free Institute of Science

October 6, 2011

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This lecture is part of the Weeknights at the Wagner series.

Fewer than 400,000 African and Asian elephants exist today. These last remnants of the 100 million year old lineage of Proboscidea are under severe threat of extinction. Virginia Pearson will discuss the evolution and complex life history of elephants and the perilous future these sentient beings face due to the ivory poaching crisis, to relentless agricultural expansion onto elephant rangeland and migration routes , and to the lethal elephant herpesviruses, the current focus of her research.

Virginia Riddle Pearson has studied elephants for forty years. She is a Guest Researcher in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, an Honorary Associate in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and an Emeritus Trustee of the Zoological Society of Philadelphia.

Image credit: Aldrovandi, Ulisse. De Quadrupedibus solidipedibus volumen integrum. Bononiæ, 1649. Collection of the Wagner Free Institute of Science Library.