Eitan Tchernov

Eitan Tchernov in 1984

Eitan Tchernov ( Hebrew איתן צ'רנוב; * September 16, 1935 in Tel Aviv , Palestine (League of Nations mandate) ; † December 13, 2002 ) was an Israeli paleontologist , archaeologist and paleoecologist .

Life

Tchernov was born in Florentin, a southern district of Tel Aviv. He spent his early childhood with relatives in the moshaw Ein Vered , where he soon began collecting birds and watching birds . Towards the end of the sixth grade he returned to Tel Aviv and went to school at the Ahad-Ha'am School. Together with other young people he founded an association of wildlife lovers with the aim of collecting, classifying and identifying animals and plants. The group turned to the zoological garden of the educational institute of Yehoshua Margolin , where they received support from Heinrich Mendelssohn and Haim Marom. They were then taught by the zoologists Hanan Bitinsky-Saltz and Yitzhak Barash in a youth center at the Hassan-Bek Mosque in Jaffa . There Tchernov met his future wife, Ora Eytan, who later became a well-known children's book illustrator. Tchernov was not drafted into the Israel Defense Forces because of heart murmurs . In 1957, he entered the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , where he studied zoology, botany, geology and biochemistry. In the third year of his studies, at the suggestion of his mentor Georg Haas , he turned to palaeontology and studied the evolution of molluscs, birds, reptiles and mammals in Israel and more generally in the Middle East. In 1966 he was charged with a dissertation on mammals in prehistoric sites to Ph.D. PhD.

In 1960 Tchernov became an assistant at the Department of Zoology at the University of Jerusalem. In 1966 he became an assistant professor and finally in 1984 a full professor. He spent his entire career at this university. He was also a research fellow at the Institute of Prehistory and Early History and Paleontology in Nairobi , Kenya, and visiting professor at the British Museum in London , the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University . From 1976 he made repeated trips to the Institute for Paleontology of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris .

Georg Hass, who together with René Neuville studied the fossil fauna that was discovered during excavations in the Judean Desert and in the Qafzeh Cave, began a fruitful collaboration with Moshe Stekelis , professor of prehistory at the Hebrew University after the Second World War . This double influence led Eitan Tchernov to work more closely with archaeologists, especially those who dealt with the Pleistocene .

Tchernov's research focused on the Quaternary . With Ofer Bar-Yosef he led the excavation of the Pleistocene deposit of 'Ubeidiya on the Sea of ​​Galilee from 1967 to 1974 . From 1988 to 1994 he worked with Claude Guérin and from 1997 to 2000 with Gerhard Bosinski on excavations. In collaboration with Baruch Arensburg and Ofer Bar-Yosef, he initiated a large research program in the Hayonim Cave from 1965 to 1979, during which he first found fossil evidence of the presence of house mice and thus evidence of the sedentariness of the Natufia . After the deaths of Georg Haas and Jean Bouchud , he continued studying fauna and microfauna in the Qafzeh cave. He was also involved in a research program that examined the development of the cultures and populations of the Levant from the late Old Paleolithic to the early Upper Paleolithic .

Tchnernov headed the center for planning and environmental management in 1980 and from 1979 to 1982 the technical committee of the nature conservation authority.

In 1991 he founded the Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was its first chairman. He was also involved in establishing the Israel Conservation Agency and served as the first ranger and later as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Nature Conservation Society and other nature conservation authorities, including the UNESCO MAB Committee (Humans and Biosphere) and the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE, Scientific Committee for Environmental Problems ). From 1986 to 2002 he was co-editor of the Hebrew environmental magazine Sevivot .

Tchernov died in December 2002 of complications from cancer.

Dedication names

In 1980 Georg Haas named Nothosaurus tchernovi after Tchernov. In 2005 Tchernov was honored in the Art epithet of Judeasaurus tchernovi . In 2006, named Yehudah L. Werner , the snake Micrelaps tchernovi from the family of Erdvipern (Atractaspididae) in honor of Eitan Tchernov.

literature

• Ofer Bar-Yosef, Bernard Vandermeersch : Eitan Tchernov (1935–2002). In: Paléorient Vol. 28, No. 2, 2002, pp. 6-7
• Liora Horwitz, Rivka Rabinovich: ICAZ Newsletter . International Council for Archeozoology. S. 14. Spring 2003. Archived from the original on January 23, 2012. Retrieved on February 13, 2018.