Thomas Blakiston

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Wright Blakiston (born Lymington, England, December 27, 1832, died October 15, 1891) was an English explorer and naturalist.

Blakiston explored western Canada with the Palliser Expedition between 1857 and 1859. In 1862 he travelled up the Yangtze River in China, going further than any Westerner before him. He spent the next part of his life in Japan and became one of the major naturalists in that country. He moved to the United States in 1886. Blakiston died of pneumonia while in San Diego, California in 1891 and is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery, Columbus, Ohio.

Blakiston was the first person to notice that animals in Hokkaidō, Japan's northern island, were related to northern Asian species, whereas those on Honshū to the south were related to those from southern Asia. The Tsugaru Strait between the two islands was therefore established as a major zoogeographical boundary, and became known as the "Blakiston Line".

Blakiston collected an owl specimen in Hakodate, Japan in 1883. This was later described by Henry Seebohm and named Blakiston's Fish Owl.