Robert C. Stebbins, an internationally known expert on reptiles and amphibians, an author of field guides on herps, and a professor who took the time to be involved in cryptozoology pursuits, has died at the age of 98, on September 23, 2013. He is perhaps mostly recalled for his Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, first published as part of the Peterson Field Guide series in 1966.
During the early years of cryptozoology, on September 1, 1960, three zoology professors, Robert C. Stebbins of the University of California Berkeley, Tom Rodgers of Chico State College and Nathan Cohen of Modesto Junior College formed a Giant Salamander expedition. Tom Rogers, the same Tom Rogers who lead several unsuccessful expeditions in 1948, would later note that the team was accompanied by ten student laypeople who would sometimes mistake sunken logs or tree branches as Giant Salamanders.
The cryptid California Giant Salamander is said to be related to and as big as the Chinese Giant Salamander, shown here.
The team was able to collect almost a dozen Pacific Giant Salamanders, Dicamptodons, but the largest was only 11 ½ inches long, a far cry from the reported 8 foot length associated with the mysterious Trinity Alps Giant Salamander. Rogers, who was deeply skeptical from the beginning, hoped that this evidence, or lack there of, would put to rest any rumors about Giant Salamanders in the Trinity Mountains.
I wrote of Stebbins and the other expedition members in the Giant Salamander chapter of my Tom Slick book. Slick was extremely involved in the search for the Trinity Alps’ Giant Salamanders, conducting his own quests.
The Los Angles Times noted:
| Dr. Stebbins, 98, died Sept. 23 at his home in Eugene, Ore., of undisclosed causes. The death was confirmed by the University of California at Berkeley, where Dr. Stebbins taught and did research for more than three decades.Robert Cyril Stebbins was born March 31, 1915, in Chico, Calif., near a ranch and orchard that his family worked. On a camping trip in the Sierra foothills when he was 5, he had the first encounter he could remember with a reptile.
“Along a creek, I came upon a pond turtle,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. “I can still feel the sharp little claws in my hands and see its eye looking up at me, perhaps in fear. I was enthralled.”
He completed his undergraduate degree and doctorate in zoology at UCLA. While going to college he also spent time working as a park ranger, and during World War II, UCLA obtained a waiver from combat duty so that he could teach Navy medical personnel how to prevent parasitic diseases.
He landed at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in 1945 as its first curator of herpetology — the study of reptiles and amphibians — and was involved in numerous studies.
In 1949 he initiated one of the best known — it was on a pair of Ensatina salamanders that looked very different and apparently didn’t interbreed. But the “elegantly worked out” study, as Dawkins described it in his 2004 book “The Ancestor’s Tale,” showed that the salamanders had common ancestors but then developed different traits because of being separated for a long period by a geographical barrier.
Dr. Stebbins spent much time toiling alone in his office on the drawings and paintings that were used in his field guides. Generally working from live, anesthetized animals, he measured every part to work out proportions.
Dr. Stebbins’ books were published as part of the Peterson Field Guides series. “Before them,” Sweet said, “there had not been anything you could hold in your hands, with good illustrations and distribution maps. They were in bookstores and kids could get them for Christmas.
“They showed you could go out and do this yourself.”
Dr. Stebbins retired from the university in 1978 but continued to work on books. The Field Guide is now in its third edition, and his Connecting With Nature, published in 2012 by the National Science Teachers Association, is a guide to getting students more interested in the natural world.
One of his main causes was to preserve sections of desert lands in California from use by dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and similar motorized vehicles. His efforts were met with strong objection from off-road vehicle enthusiasts, but in 1994 the federal California Desert Protection Act was passed, designating numerous wilderness areas in the state.
Survivors include his wife of 72 years, Anna-rose Cooper Stebbins; three children; a sister; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
One of the most recent accolades he received came last month with the naming of a species of lizard, Anniella stebbinsi, in his honor. |
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