Edith Kristan-Tollmann

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Edith Kristan-Tollmann , née Kristan, (born April 14, 1934 in Vienna ; † August 25, 1995 there ) was an Austrian geologist and paleontologist .

Life

She was the daughter of an elementary school director and initially wanted to become a teacher (she received her Matura at the teacher training college ), but then studied geology, paleontology and petrography in Vienna with a doctorate in 1959 on geology and paleontology of the Hohe Wand area . Her teachers included Othmar Kühn , Felix Machatschki , Hans Wieseneder and Leopold Kober . In the same year she married her fellow student Alexander Tollmann , with whom she had a son Raoul (* 1967). During her studies she also worked as a religion teacher in Vienna. She specialized in micropaleontology and especially the foraminifera of the Triassic (in what was then the Tethys Ocean) and the Jurassic. She described numerous new taxa . In addition to foraminifera, she later treated ostracods and other microfossils and invertebrate macrofossils such as crinoids (for which she had a special weakness), corals , mollusks , brachiopods , and sea ​​rollers . After initially working as a freelancer for the Federal Geological Institute , she was a micropalaeontological consultant for the Austrian Mineral Oil Administration from 1961 to 1968 . In 1966 she was a visiting scientist at the Swedish State Geological Institute in Stockholm and in 1971/72 with a Humboldt fellowship at the Senckenberg Museum and the University of Frankfurt and then in 1972/73 at the University of Tübingen (Collaborative Research Center 53, Construction Morphology ). From 1976 to 1978 she conducted research at the Natural History Museum Vienna. In 1982 she completed her habilitation in micropalaeontology in Vienna and gave courses at the universities of Graz and Innsbruck. She last lived with her husband at Albrechtsberg Castle . She died of cancer.

plant

Kristan-Tollmann collected almost all of the Alps and expanded this worldwide in the 1970s (Turkey, Iran, China, Timor, New Guinea, Australia, Japan, Central and North America, such as the Sonoran Desert in Mexico), to some extent to a great extent dangerous trips to remote areas. For example, she narrowly escaped the massacres in Timor in 1975. She often traveled alone but prepared her trips thoroughly. A main focus of her worldwide work was the global remote correlation of paleontological data in the Triassic Tethys and the early Jurassic ( Lias ). In doing so, she discovered a surprising similarity in the faunas and the sequence of shifts, which also led to revisions of the tariff descriptions. Many of the macrofossils first described in Austria in the classical period of paleontology from this time, which had received new first descriptions in other parts of the world, were assigned again. Based on the idea that they could cover great distances in the larval stage as part of the plankton, she reconstructed ocean currents in the Tethys Ocean. She explained facies correspondences between the Alpine Triassic and China, for example, through global sea level fluctuations. She explored the border between Tethys and what was then the Pacific ( Panthalassa ) in New Caledonia . She was a founding member of Shallow Tethys and was involved in the organization of their meetings, for example at the 4th Congress in 1994 at the Albrechtsberg Castle of the Tollmanns. In 1991 she also organized the 3rd meeting of German-speaking ostracode researchers in Albrechtsberg.

Around 120 scientific publications and the first description of around 500 new taxa come from her.

From 1978 she and Alexander Tollmann published the communications of the Austrian Geological Society for 10 years until 1992 . 1975 to 1977 and 1990 to 1992 she was on the advisory board of the Paleontological Society .

Flood Book

She has been interested in the history of the priesthood and in theological-archaeological questions since her youth, which resulted in the 1993 book But the Flood Was There , which was written with her husband Alexander Tollmann and which became a bestseller in Austria and Germany, but also both made the subject of severe criticism. In the book, the origins of the priesthood (as a mediator in sacrifices to the gods) and world religions, biblical flood, Atlantis myth and an Atlantis culture and other things are traced back to the decisive experiences of a catastrophe in the Mesolithic. According to their own statements, the meteorite impact theory of Luis Walter Alvarez had an influence on the development of their geological neo-catastrophic perspective , and the Tollmanns postulated such impact influences on a smaller scale for older human history. A corresponding impact, which corresponds to the deluge traditions of the ancient high cultures and ended a former Atlantis high culture, took place around 7,500 BC according to the Tollmanns. Instead of. After the Tollmanns, an Atlantis on the mid-Atlantic ridge (near the Azores) was just as affected as other parts of the world, in which, as in Central America, there is a flood myth, since the comet that caused it fell into several parts and hit the world. They also suspect further impact events at intervals of around 10,000 years, seeing dust bands in Antarctic ice cores between around 17,000 and 18,000 years old as evidence of a previous impact that contributed to warming at the end of the last ice age.

She was also involved in the follow-up book by Alexander Tollmann ( The world year is coming to an end ), in which she predicts the end of the world at the turn of the millennium according to prophecies by Nostradamus , and appears as a co-author. The book did not appear until after her death.

Others

Like her husband, who played an important role in the Austrian Greens, she was active in the anti-nuclear movement and for environmental protection. In their Atlantis book they also warn of the dangers posed by the numerous nuclear power plants, especially with regard to geological (earthquake) and impact risks.

Fonts

  • Rotaliidea (Foraminifera) from the Triassic of the Eastern Alps. In: Contributions to the micropalaeontology of the Alpine Triassic , Yearbook Geologische Bundesanstalt, Sb. 5, Vienna 1960, pp. 47–78
  • Development series of the Triassic Foraminifera. Paleont. Z., 37, 1963, 147-154,
  • On the characteristics of triadic microfauna. Paleont. Z., 38, 1964, 66-73,
  • The foraminifera from the Rhaetian Zlambach marls from the Fischerwiese near Aussee in the Salzkammergut , 1964
  • with Alexander Tollmann: The position of the Tethys in the Triassic and the origin of their fauna. Mitt. Austrian geol. Ges., 74-75 (1981/82), 129-135,
  • with Alexander Tollmann: Paleogeography of the European Tethys from Paleozoic to Mesozoic and the Triassic Relations of the Eastern Part of Tethys and Panthalassa. In: K. Nakazawa, JM Dickins (editor), The Tethys - Her Paleogeography and Paleobiogeography from Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 3-22, 1985, Tokyo (Tokai Univ. Press).
  • with Alexander Tollmann: How did they manage to travel the World 230 million years ago? Austria Today, No. 4, 1985, 33-40,
  • with Alexander Tollmann: And there was the flood. From myth to historical truth , Droemer-Knaur 1993 (also translated into Dutch)

literature

  • Obituary by Harald Lobitzer in Mitt. Österr. Geolog. Ges., 87, 1996, 151-157
  • Richard Lein, Leo Krystyn, Edith Kristan-Tollmann (April 14, 1934 to August 25, 1995) , Albertiana 1996
  • Tillfried Cernajsek : Kristan-Tollmann, Edith. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 411-414.

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