ANDREWS, ROY CHAPMAN ), American naturalist and explorer, was born at Beloit, Wis., on Jan. 26, 1884. Immediately after his graduation from Beloit college in 1906 he entered the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and went to Alaska on his first exploring trip in 1908. In 1909-10 he accompanied, as a naturalist, the "U.S.S. Albatross" on its voyage to the Dutch East Indies, Borneo and Celebes; in 1911-12 he explored northern Korea; and in 1913 was with the Borden Alaska expedition. The same year he received the degree of M.A. from Columbia university.
Until 1914 he specialized in the study of whales and other water mammals. From that date he devoted himself, as chief of the division of Asiatic exploration of the American Museum of Natural History, to the exploration of the lesser known portions of Central Asia, China and Borneo, also serving in the U.S. Intelligence service in China, in 1918. The expeditions under his leadership explored successively, Tibet, southwest China, Burma, North China, Mongolia and Central Asia. In Mongolia they found some of the richest fossil fields known to the world. The fruits of the expeditions which he led in 1921-22 and 1925 into Central Asia included the discovery of new geological formations, large fossil fields, dinosaur eggs, and the skull and other parts of the Baluchi therium-the largest known land mammal.
The expeditions discovered the oldest known mammals and ex tensive evidence of primitive human life on the Central Asian plateau. Evidence was discovered also pointing to Central Asia as a place of origin and centre of distribution for much of the rep tilian and mammalian life of the world. The expeditions continued work in Central Asia until 1929.
He has written Whale Hunting with Gun and Camera (1916), Camps and Trails in China, with Yvette Borup Andrews (1918), Across Mongolian Plains (1921), On the Trail of Ancient Man (1926-27), Ends of the Earth (1929) and numerous monographs and scientific bulletins of the American Museum of Natural History and other scientific institutions.