Baska

In his fifty years at the British Museum of Natural History , John Edward Gray described 306 reptile  species (1)(Uetz, 2010). It would appear that he was a classic “splitter”;  naming one species under several names. One group that benefitted from Gray’s nomenclatural creativity is the genus of six species of large river turtles, Batagur. When he named the genus, he gave no etymology and none has since been deduced, leaving the word without meaning other than being a genus of turtles. This genus has been at the heart of scientific exploration of the 19th century and has seen the struggles of European colonisation of Asia. Members of the genus have been revered as the property of Royalty and most populations have been decimated through their harvest of adults and eggs. Batagur contains five of the twenty-five most endangered species in the world (TCC, 2011). Consequently,  Batagur  turtles have been the subject of innovative conservation breeding efforts, taxonomic and genetic a