Michael Wuttke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Wuttke (* 1950 ) is a German paleontologist .

Until his retirement at the end of 2015, he was head of the geological history department in the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate in Mainz. He is also a lecturer at the University of Mainz . Wuttke was President of the Paleontological Society from 2010 to 2012 . Since his retirement he has been researching as an appointed volunteer at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research in Frankfurt am Main .

He dealt u. a. with fossil frogs (anuras), fossil freshwater sponges and the vertebrate taphonomy and published numerous works in the context of the rescue and research excavations in Rhineland-Palatinate, for example in the Hunsrück slate and on the Enspel fossil deposit in the Westerwald. The latter formed in the Upper Oligocene (24.7 million years ago) in a crater lake that petrified to form an oil shale similar to that of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Messel Pit , but was covered here by a thick layer of basalt. As in Messel, the fossil deposit was threatened after the end of the basalt mining, which is why Wuttke and a team developed plans for an adventure park, some of which have already been implemented (see Tertiary and Industrial Adventure Park Stöffel ).

Together with the geologist Achim Reisdorf (then a PhD student in sedimentology at the University of Basel, now Ruhr Museum Essen), he clarified the long open question why some long-necked and long-tailed dinosaurs or long-necked fossil birds with necks or tails curved strongly over their backs petrified. Through underwater experiments on recent bird necks, they found that the cause of this was not a convulsion of death ( opisthotonus ), but rather the tension of an elastic ligament (ligamentum elasticum interlaminare) that connects the vertebrae from the neck to the base of the tail Base connecting the spinous processes. If the gravitational force applied to the lifeless, outstretched necks is canceled by the water experiment, then "excess" tensile forces of the ligament unfold automatically and bend the necks. The occasion of the actuopalaeontological investigation by the authors was the taphonomic analysis of the skeleton of Compsognathus longipes from the Solnhofen limestone. This showed that the back curvature of the neck and tail only gradually occurred postmortem, with progressive decomposition of the soft tissues at the bottom of a lagoon, so that death convulsions were excluded as the cause. It was not until 2007 that American scientists (the veterinarian Cynthia Marshall Faux and the paleontologist Kevin Padian ) supported the death-spasm hypothesis in a widely acclaimed study.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Wuttke: Actuopalaeontological studies on the decay of vertebrates. Part 1: Anura , Senckenbergiana lethaea, 64 (5/6): 529-560, 1983
  2. ↑ M. Wuttke, T. Přikryl, VY Ratnikov, Z. Dvořák, Z. Roček: Generic diversity and distributional dynamics of the Palaeobatrachidae (Amphibia_ Anura) , Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, 92 (3): 367-395, 2012
  3. ^ M. Wuttke: Redescription of the Middle Eocene frog Lutetiobatrachus gracilis WUTTKE in SANCHIZ, 1998 (Lower Geiseltalian, "Grube Messel", near Darmstadt, southern Hesse, Germany) , Kaupia, 18: 29-41, 2012
  4. ↑ M. Wuttke: The genus Eopelobates (Anura, Pelobatidae) from Messel, Geiseltal, and Eckfeld (Middle Eocene, Germany). Part I_Redescription of Eopelobates wagneri from Messel , Kaupia 18: 47-71, 2012
  5. ↑ Schindler, T., Wuttke, M., Poschmann, T .: Oldest record of freshwater sponges (Porifera: Spongillina) - spiculite finds in the Permo-Carboniferous of Europe , Paläontologische Zeitschrift, 82 (4): 373-384, 2008
  6. ↑ M. Wuttke: Actuopalaeontological studies on the decay of vertebrates. Part 1: Anura, Senckenbergiana lethaea, 64 (5/6): 529-560, 1983
  7. ↑ M. Wuttke & AG Reisdorf (eds.): Taphonomic processes in terrestrial and marine environments , Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, special volume, volume 92 (1), 2012
  8. ↑ Christoph Bartels , M. Wuttke, Derek Briggs (eds.): Project Nahecaris. Decoding of Devonian Palaeo ecosystems from the Hunsrück schist from Bundenbach , Metalla, Volume 9, Bochum 2002
  9. ↑ M. Wuttke, D. Uhl, T. Schindler (Eds.): Fossil-Lagerstätte Enspel - exceptional preservation in an Upper Oligocene maar , Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, 90 (special volume), 2010
  10. ↑ for example Reto Caluori: Why dinosaur skeletons twist so bizarre , idw, February 16, 2012
  11. ^ Reisdorf, Wuttke: Re-evaluating Moodie's Opisthotonic-Posture Hypothesis in fossil vertebrates. Part I: Reptiles - The taphonomy of the bipedal dinosaurs Compsognathus longipes and Juravenator starki from the Solnhofen Archipelago (Jurassic, Germany) , Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, Volume 92 (1): 119-168, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Wuttke, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1950