ABSTRACT
History of crab research in North America is so broad a subject for coverage in the few pages allotted to it that limits of some kind are necessary to give the treatment meaning. That record has already been published on in exacting detail in scattered accounts in a spectrum of publications. The central points considered are exploration and discovery, some ramifications of selected investigations and economic development, research giants, and landmark papers. An outline that might apply to the general research history of many of the species can be conveyed by reading the subject headings in the table of contents of any FAO Fishery Synopsis volume on crustaceans. The field of brachyuran studies then changed. As the main outlines of the North American brachyuran fauna became well established, descriptive efforts, always a mixture of several disciplines, became more analytical.
