Daniel Giraud Elliot was an American zoologist. He used his wealth to publish a series of colour-plate books on birds and animals. Elliot wrote the text himself and commissioned artists such as Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit, both of whom had worked for John Gould, to provide the illustrations. The books included A Monograph of the Phasianidae (Family of the Pheasants) (1870–72), A Monograph of the Paradiseidae or Birds of Paradise (1873),[3] A Monograph of the Felidae or Family of Cats (1878) and Review of the Primates (1913). In 1899 he was invited to join the Harriman Alaska Expedition to study and document wildlife along the Alaskan coast. Elliot was one of the founders of the American Museum on Natural History in New York City, of the American Ornithologists' Union and of the Société zoologique de France. He was also curator of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago