Gustav Tornier

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Gustav Tornier (born May 9, 1859 in Dombrowken , Kulmerland , † April 25, 1938 in Berlin ) was a German herpetologist . He was an expert on amphibians and reptiles in the former German East Africa .

Tornier studied at the University of Heidelberg , where he received his doctorate in 1892. He had already worked at the Zoological Museum of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (later the Museum of Natural History ). There he was in the herpetological collection, which he headed from 1895, when Paul Matschie took over the mammal collection. In 1902 he became professor of zoology at the University of Berlin. From 1903 he also headed the library of the museum, was assistant director in 1921 and acting director in 1922/23. In 1923 he retired. His successor in the herpetological department was Ernst Ahl .

In 1909 he was involved in a debate about the locomotion of Diplodocus , at the time because of the cast donated by Andrew Carnegie Berlin, which was displayed in the Natural History Museum. Oliver Hay had criticized the reconstruction and said that Diplodocus would have moved like crocodiles with his limbs spread sideways. Tornier had come to the same conclusion independently of Hay and supported Hay's theory. This brought them severe criticism in 1910 from the director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh William Jacob Holland , who had supervised the installation of the skeleton in Berlin.

From 1886 to 1890 he published work on the phylogeny of the elbow and foot of mammals.

He first described and named, among other things, several species of chameleons .

In 1903 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . The sauropod Tornieria ( Barosaurus ) discovered in Tendaguru is named after him.

Fonts

  • The struggle with food: A contribution to Darwinism , Berlin 1884, archive
  • The reptiles and amphibians of East Africa , Reimer, Berlin 1896

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diplodocus at Dinosaur Hunters
  2. ↑ Among other things, the phylogenesis of the terminal segment of the mammalian hind limbs , Morphologisches Jahrbuch, Volume 14, 1888, 223–328
  3. ↑ Member entry of Gustav Tornier at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Tornier, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Dombrowken , Kulmerland
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1938
Place of death Berlin