Miklós Kretzoi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Miklós Kretzoi (born February 9, 1907 in Budapest ; † March 15, 2005 ) was a Hungarian vertebrate paleontologist and geologist .

Life

Kretzoi grew up in Austria-Hungary , where he addition to his native German and Hungarian learned. He graduated from the Péter Pázmány University of Science in Budapest , where he received his doctorate in geology , palaeontology and geography in 1929/1930 . From 1926 to 1930 Kretzoi worked unpaid at the Hungarian Royal Institute for Geology as a volunteer until he joined geological and cartographic work for plains and soil science between 1930 and 1933. From 1933 to 1941 he worked as a mapping geologist and geophysicist at Eurogasco, the later Hungarian-American Oil Industry AG ( Magyar-Amerikai Olajipari Rt , MAORT for short), which he left during the Second World War . In the following time he was an employee of the Hungarian National Museum ( Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum , MNM for short), where he was deputy curator of the collection for geology and palaeontology until 1946 and from 1945 department head and director of the newly founded "Collection for vertebrate palaeontology and comparative bone theory" Post that Kretzoi held until 1950.

From March 1, 1950, Kretzoi returned to the State Institute for Geology of Hungary ( Magyar Állami Földtani Intézetbe , MÁFI for short), where he initially joined geological mapping work in Transdanubia . In 1951 he took over the management of the first and largest paleontological collection of vertebrates in Hungary, which he held until August 31, 1956. From 1956 to 1958 he was director of the MÁFI, and he headed the paleontological department until 1959. Until 1974, he also worked here as a consultant on outstanding scientific topics. In 1970, Kretzoi moved to Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen , one of the leading universities in the country, and until 1974 took over the chair for animal and human studies. Even after his retirement in 1974 he remained a research assistant at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences until 1986 .

Research focus

During his creative time, Kretzoi participated in numerous scientific projects and described numerous new species. His field of work included small mammals , predators , primates , odd-toed ungulates , proboscis and whales , but also trace fossils and birds , with Kretzoi paying particular attention to predators. Important excavations on the part of Kretzois, which he carried out on behalf of the MÁFI in the 1950s, took place in the Villány Mountains , in Csákvár and Polgárdi . The studies in Ördöglyuk barlang (Devil's Hole Cave) near Solymár (north of Budapest) and in Betfia near Oradea ( Romania ), which he conducted as a university lecturer, are also of great importance . Outstanding, however, are the excavations in Rudabánya , one of the richest European fossil sites from the Miocene 10 to 12 million years ago, in which the European primate species Rudapithecus hungaricus named by Kretzoi was discovered and whose research he headed from 1970 to 1978 as scientific director. In 1975 he published the first description of another taxon , Bodvapithecus altiplanus ; Both Rudapithecus and Bodvapithecus probably belong - possibly as female and male variants of the same species - to the circle of forms of the Dryopithecini . In 1954 he described the genus Pachystruthio from the Old Pleistocene of Georgia , which weighs around 450 kg and is one of the heaviest known birds in the northern hemisphere.

In addition, Kretzoi worked with László Vértes from 1965 onwards the stratigraphic and chronological correlation of the Hungarian vertebrate fauna, some of the results were published by Kretzoi in 1969, where he made a fine stratigraphic subdivision of the Pliocene and Pleistocene . In addition, Kretzoi contributed to the processing of important Pleistocene and Paleolithic sites, such as Tata (1964), Érd (1968) and Vértesszőlős (1964, 1990). Above all, his reconstructions of hunting and raw material use by the early human hunter-gatherer communities, developed by Érd based on the fossil mammal population, gave important impulses for archaeozoological research. Kretzoi was an honorary member of the Hungarian Geography Society since 1979 and an honorary member of INQUA from 1987 .

Awards

  • 1969: Kadic Ottokár Medal - for outstanding work in karst and cave research, awarded by the Hungarian Society for Karst and Cave Research
  • 1992: Széchenyi Prize (State Prize for Outstanding Scientific Achievement) - for his work in the processing of the remains of Hungarian fossil vertebrates, especially those of prehistoric man, and public awareness of the results.

Fonts (selection)

  • Miklós Kretzoi: The predators of the Hipparion fauna of Polgardi. Annales Instituti Geologici Hungarici 40 (3), 1952, 5-42
  • Miklós Kretzoi: The Significance of the Rudabánya Prehominid Finds in Hominization Research. Acta Biologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31, 1980, pp. 503-506
  • Miklós Kretzoi, Viola T. Dobosi (Eds.): Vértesszőlős. Site, Man and Culture. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1990, ISBN 963-05-4713-9
  • Miklós Kretzoi: The fossil Hominoids of Rudabánya (Northeastern Hungary) and early hominization. Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest 2002 (2003), ISBN 963-9046-87-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b David R. Begun: Miklós Kretzoi, 1907-2005. Evolutionary Anthropology 14, 2005, pp. 125–126, ( full text (PDF) )
  2. ↑ a b István Vörös: In memoriam: Kretzoi Miklós (1907 - 2005). Archeometriai Műhely 2, 2005, pp. 57–58, ( full text (PDF) )
  3. ↑ Miklós Kretzoi: History of primates and hominization. Symposia Biologica Hungarica 9, 1969, pp. 3-11
  4. ↑ Miklós Kretzoi: New ramapithecines and Pliopithecus from the lower Pliocene of Rudabánya in north-eastern Hungary. Nature 257, 1975, pp. 578-581, doi: 10.1038 / 257578a0
  5. ^ David R. Begun: Dryopithecins, de Bonis, and the European origin of the African apes and human clade. Geodiversitasd 31 (4), 2009, pp. 789–816 (here: p. 798), ( full text (PDF) )
  6. ^ M. Kretzoi: Ostrich and camel remains from the Central Danubebasin. Acta Geologica 2, 1954, pp. 231-242
  7. ↑ Nikita V. Zelenkov, Alexander V. Lavrov, Dmitry B. Startsev, Innessa A. Vislobokova, Alexey V. Lopatin: A giant early Pleistocene bird from eastern Europe: unexpected component of terrestrial faunas at the time of early Homo arrival. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 39 (2), 2019, p. E1605521, doi: 10.1080 / 02724634.2019.1605521
personal data
SURNAME Kretzoi, Miklós
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kretzoi, Miklos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 2005