Who is J.K. Rowling’s new protagonist, Newt Scamander?

Magizoology is sure to be trending after Thursday’s news that J.K. Rowling is returning to her Harry Potter roots. The bestselling author’s new partnership with Warner Bros. will involve inventing a new series of movies based on Newt Scamander, the fictional author of Harry Potter’s first-year textbook “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

Turns out Mr. Scamander is a magizoologist, one who studies magical creatures. His book, which features 75 magical species found around the world, was culled from his years of travel across five continents.

Rowling, who earlier this year surprised readers by revealing that she was behind the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and the crime novel “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” said in the statement issued Thursday that the story will begin in New York, “seventy years before Harry’s gets underway.”

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However, the slim 42-page reference book, which Rowling published in 2001 after the fourth “Harry Potter” novel, contains a forward from Albus Dumbledore, Hogwart’s beloved headmaster, who serves as a central character in the “Harry Potter” series.

Whether Dumbledore plays a role in this new project is unclear.

Rowling said in the release that she liked Scamander so much she “even married his grandson, Rolf, to one of my favorite characters from the Harry Potter series, Luna Lovegood.”

Here is what else we know about Scamander:

• He was born in 1897, sorted into the Hufflepuff house at Hogwarts. He became a magizoologist at the encouragement of his mother, who was a breeder of the hippogriff, a magical creature that is half eagle, half horse.

• After graduating from Hogwarts, Scamander joined the wizard government, called the Ministry of Magic, where he worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. His career included the creation of the Werewolf Register of 1947, the 1965 passage of the Ban on Experimental Breeding and many research trips for the Dragon Research and Restraint Bereau.

• He is said to have written “Fantastic Beasts” in 1918. At some point in his life, he was made the headmaster of Hogwarts.

It’s safe to say that Scamander’s adventurous life is ripe for further exploration and that all the stories will be chock full of computer-generated characters, including werewolves, dragons and hippogriffs.

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