Clifford H. Pope

Clifford Hillhouse Pope was a noted American herpetologist. He was the son of Mark Cooper Pope and Harriett Alexander (Hull) Pope, and grew up in Washington, Georgia. While in college in the summers of 1919 and 1920 Pope went to the New York Zoological Society's Tropical Research Station at Katabo Point British Guiana, maintained by William Beebe. Starting in 1921, after graduating from the University of Virginia, he spent many years in China as part of the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History, accompanying Roy Chapman Andrews on the expedition to the Gobi Desert that first discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs. Pope mastered the Chinese language and made a total of eight expeditions in Chinese territory prior to 1930. In China he gave scientific names to the Kuatun horned toad, Hyla sanchiangensis, Amolops chunganensis, Rana fukienensis, and others. He also did a great deal of work with Karl Patterson Schmidt. Pope worked at the American Museum of Natural History from 1921 to 1934. He was president and journal editor of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in 1935.