The discovery and naming of the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) after 1793, with details of the Rhinoceros Sumatricus of Bertuch (1805) and Wilhelm (1808)

Abstract

There was a considerable gap of 21 years between the illustrated description of a specimen of the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) by William Bell in 1793 and the proposal to accept it as a named new species by Gotthelf Fischer in 1814. In the meantime some 17 authors reported the possibility that the animal should be regarded as a new species. Hitherto overlooked, the German writer Friedrich Justin Bertuch used a new name in the caption to a reproduction of Bell’s plate, as Rhinoceros bicornis Sumatricus. This was published in 1805 in a second edition of his “Bilderbuch für Kinder”, a serial magazine aimed at young people. This work has an extremely complex bibliography through many re-issues and translations, which is only partly resolved. The same name in the combination Rhinoceros Sumatricus was included by Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm in a companion to the “Bilderbuch” available in 1808. The complicated circumstances of Bertuch’s proposal in 1805 and his unusual usage of a trinomen lead to the suggestion that his book might not be consistently binominal, making the name unavailable. The naming by Wilhelm in 1808 is straightforward and correct, hence Rhinoceros sumatricus Wilhelm, 1808 is an available name and a senior objective synonym of Rhinoceros sumatrensis G. Fischer, 1814. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature allows the suggestion that Wilhelm’s name was a nomen oblitum (forgotten name). The various plates of the rhinoceros found in the “Bilderbuch” by Bertuch and the “Unterhaltungen aus der Naturgeschichte” are figured and explained.