Roger Henri Bour (9 July 1947 – 7 March 2020) was a French herpetologist. His research focused primarily on turtles (Testudines).
Biography Roger Bour was born in Fontainebleau, France, the son of Georges Roger Arthur Auguste Bour and Jeanne Ernestine Moreau. He had an older and a younger sister. After attending schools in Houilles, Fontainebleau, Paris, Onzain, and Forbach, he studied zoology and biology at the universities of Nancy and Paris. From 1968 until his retirement in 2017, he worked as a research associate at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.
Bour’s research focused on turtles from Brazil, Africa, Madagascar, the Seychelles, and the Mascarene Islands (Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues). In 1973, he described the southern toad-headed turtle (Phrynops tuberculatus vanderhaegei) from the family Chelidae, which was elevated to species status by Peter C. H. Pritchard in 1979 as Phrynops vanderhaegei. In 2005, Bour and Hussam Zaher placed this taxon in the genus Mesoclemmys.Roger Bour: Contribution à la connaissance de Phrynops nasutus (Schweigger, 1812) et Phrynops tuberculatus (Luederwaldt, 1926). Description d’une nouvelle sous-espèce originaire du Paraguay, Phrynops tuberculatus vanderhaegei. (Testudinata-Pleurodira-Chelidae). Bulletin Societé Zoologique du France 98:175–190.Peter C. H. Pritchard: Encyclopedia of Turtles. New Jersey: T.F.H. Publications, 1979. ISBN 0-87666-918-6.Roger Bour, Hussam Zaher: A new species of Mesoclemmys, from the open formations of northeastern Brazil (Chelonii, Chelidae). Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia (São Paulo), 45 (24), 2005: 295–311.
In 1986, 2000, and 2003, he published descriptions of new African species: Pelusios broadleyi, Pelusios marani, and Pelusios cupulatta, all belonging to the family Pelomedusidae.Roger Bour: Note sur Pelusios adansonii (Schweigger, 1812) et sur une nouvelle espece affine du Kenya (Chelonii, Pelomedusidae). Studia Geologica Salmanticensia, Studia Palaeocheloniologica 2(2), 1986: 23–54.Roger Bour: Une nouvelle espèce de Pelusios du Gabon (Reptilia, Chelonii, Pelomedusidae). Manouria 3 (8), 2000, pp. 1–32.Roger Bour, Jérôme Maran: Une nouvelle espèce de Pelusios de Côte d’Ivoire (Reptilia, Chelonii, Pelomedusidae). Manouria (Mezzavia) 6 (21), 2003: 24–43. In 2005, he described the Brazilian toad-headed turtle (Mesoclemmys perplexa).
In 2006, Bour and colleagues published a revision of the Hermann’s tortoise, in which the eastern subspecies T. h. robertmertensi was synonymized with the nominate western form Testudo hermanni hermanni. The same paper proposed the genus Eurotestudo, although this name was not accepted.F. de Lapparent de Broin, R. Bour, J. F. Parham, J. Perälä: Eurotestudo, a new genus for the species Testudo hermanni Gmelin, 1789 (Chelonii, Testudinidae). Comptes Rendus Palevol 5 (6), 2006, pp. 803–811.
Bour also worked on extinct species. During the 1980s, he published several scientific papers on extinct turtles from the Seychelles and the Mascarene Islands. In 1994, together with Cécile Mourer-Chauviré, François Moutou, and Sonia Ribes-Beaudemoulin, he described the extinct owl genus Mascarenotus from the Mascarenes.Cécile Mourer-Chauviré, Roger Bour, François Moutou, Sonia Ribes (1994): Mascarenotus nov. gen. (Aves, Strigiformes), genre endémique éteint des Mascareignes et M. grucheti n. sp., espèce éteinte de La Réunion. Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences Paris, Séries II 318: 1699–1706. In 1999, with the same co-authors, he described the extinct Réunion rail (Dryolimnas augusti).Cécile Mourer-Chauviré, Roger Bour, Sonia Ribes, François Moutou: The avifauna of Réunion Island (Mascarene Islands) at the time of the arrival of the first Europeans. In: Storrs L. Olson (ed.), Avian Paleontology at the Close of the 20th Century, Proceedings of the 4th International Meeting of the Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution, Washington, D.C., 4–7 June 1996, 1999, pp. 1–38.
In 2003, Bour, together with Jeremy J. Austin and E. Nicholas Arnold, showed that the taxa Dipsochelys dussumieri and Testudo sumeirei are not distinct species but synonyms of the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea).Jeremy J. Austin, E. Nicholas Arnold, Roger Bour (2003): Was there a second adaptive radiation of giant tortoises in the Indian Ocean? Using mitochondrial DNA to investigate speciation and biogeography of Aldabrachelys (Reptilia, Testudinidae). Molecular Ecology, 12(6). In 2008, he and Arnold described the extinct skink Leiolopisma ceciliae and the extinct gecko Nactus soniae from Réunion.E. Nicholas Arnold, Roger Bour: A new Nactus gecko (Gekkonidae) and a new Leiolopisma skink (Scincidae) from La Réunion, Indian Ocean, based on recent fossil remains and ancient DNA sequence. Zootaxa 1705, 2008: 40–50.
Roger Bour was also a member of the editorial board of the German turtle journal Marginata.
Eponyms In 2023, the fossil turtle species Astrochelys rogerbouri was named in his honor.
References
Further reading Ivan Ineich (2025). Roger Bour (1947–2020), Le «chéloniologiste» du Muséum de Paris. Bulletin de la Société Herpétologique de France, 186(1): 1–32.
External links