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Osbert Salvin (25 February 1835 – 1 June 1898) was an English natural history, Ornithology, and Herpetology best known for co-authoring Biologia Centrali-Americana (1879–1915) with Frederick DuCane Godman. This was a 52-volume encyclopedia on the natural history of Central America.
In the autumn of 1857, he made the first of several visits to Guatemala, returning there with Frederick DuCane Godman in 1861. It was during this journey that the Biologia Centrali-Americana was planned.
In 1871 Salvin became editor of The Ibis. He was appointed to the Strickland Curatorship in the University of Cambridge, and produced his Catalogue of the Strickland Collection. He was one of the original members of the British Ornithologists' Union. He produced the volumes on the Trochilidae and the Procellariidae in the Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum. One of his last works was the completion of Lord Lilford's Coloured Figures of British Birds (1897).
Salvin was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society, Zoological and Entomological Societies, and at the time of his death was Secretary of the British Ornithologists' Union.
The Godman-Salvin Medal, a prestigious award of the British Ornithologists' Union, is named after him and Godman.
In the scientific field of herpetology, he described two new species of reptiles: Bothriechis aurifer and Typhlops tenuis.Salvin, Osbert (1860). "On the Reptiles of Guatemala". Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1860: 451-461. Also, three species and one subspecies of reptiles have been named in his honor: Anolis salvini, Crotalus scutulatus salvini, Spiny lizard, and Staurotypus salvinii.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Salvin", p. 232).
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