Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans

Anthonie (Antoon) Cornelis Oudemans Jzn (November 12, 1858 – January 14, 1943) was a Dutch zoologist. Although he was a specialist in acarology, the study of the ticks and mites, he was often best known for his books on sea monsters and the dodo. Born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, he was the son of the noted Dutch astronomer Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans and the grandson of the Dutch educator, poet and philologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans Sr., after whom he was named. He often used the patronymic "Jzn" (for Jeanzoon) in his publications. A cousin was the entomologist J.T. Oudemans. He was educated at Arnhem and went to the University of Utrecht. He wrote his dissertation on ribbon worms, and in 1885 was appointed director of the Royal Zoological Gardens at The Hague. Oudemans worked on the acari and comprehensively reviewed all literature until 1850 in a series of articles titled Kritisch historisch Overzicht der Acarologie. He described numerous species not only of acari and insects several insect but even a primate species, the black crested mangabey. 1892 saw the publication of Oudeman's The Great Sea Serpent, a study of the many sea serpent reports from the world's oceans. Oudemans concluded that such creatures might be a previously unknown large seal, which he dubbed Megophias megophias. Reception of the volume has been described as respectful but "cold". Bernard Heuvelmans later suggested that The Great Sea Serpent was the root of cryptozoology. In 1917, he published Dodo-studiën: naar aanleiding van de vondst van een gevelsteen met dodo-beeld van 1561 te Vere, an article on extinct dodo research.