The Myriapod Types of Oscar Harger 

 (Arthropoda: Diplopoda, Chilopoda) 



Rowland M. Shelley 



North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, 

 P.O. Box 27647, Raleigh, North Carolina 27611 



ABSTRACT — The type specimens of all five milliped species — 

 Trichopetalum lunatum, T. glomeratum, T. iuloides, lulus furcifer, 

 and Polydesmus armatus — and one of the two centipedes, Lithobius 

 pinetorum, authored by Oscar Harger in his only paper on myri- 

 apods and previously thought to be lost, are housed at the Peabody 

 Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecti- 

 cut. From our knowledge of the itinerary of the Yale paleontologi- 

 cal expedition of 1871, we know the type locality of T. glomeratum, 

 I. furcifer, P. armatus, and L. pinetorum, previously stated as the 

 "John Day River Valley, Oregon" is restricted to the vicinity of 

 Canyon City, Grant County, on the western slope of the Blue Mount- 

 ains. The female holotype confirms that T. glomeratum is a repre- 

 sentative of the chordeumatoid family Conotylidae, and the name is 

 assigned provisionally to Taiyutyla pending collection of a male 

 topotype. Unidentifiable female conotylids are also reported from 

 another area in eastern Oregon and the Snake Mountains in eastern 

 Nevada, which suggests that the family is widespread in montane 

 forests at high elevations in the generally arid Columbia Plateau 

 and Basin and Range Physiographic Provinces. To facilitate future 

 studies, I provide gonopod drawings of male syntypes for /. furcifer 

 and P. armatus. 



One of the more obscure authors of North American myriapods 

 is Oscar Harger (1843-87), whose sole publication on these arthropods 

 (Harger 1872) described the milliped genus Trichopetalum and seven 

 species, two centipedes {Lithobius pinetorum and Geophilus gracilis) 

 and five millipeds {Trichopetalum lunatum, T. glomeratum, T. iuloides, 

 lulus furcifer, and Polydesmus armatus). 



Born at Oxford, Connecticut, Harger attended the Connecticut 

 Literary Institute at Suffield and Yale College, graduating from the 

 latter with honors in 1868 (Schuchert and LeVene 1940). After briefly 

 studying zoology under Professor A. E. Verrill, Harger became the 

 first assistant to the vertebrate paleontologist, O. C. Marsh, partici- 

 pating on the latter's expeditions into the American West in 1871 and 

 1873. From July to September 1872, Harger dredged marine organisms 

 on a Coast Survey steamer with Professors Verrill and Sydney I. 

 Smith, Yale's first professor of Comparative Anatomy, who earlier 

 had been naturalist to the U.S. Lake Survey and collected the types 



Brimleyana 18:1-13, June 1993 1 



