Salvador Moyà i Solà

Salvador Moyà i Solà 2012

Salvador Moyà i Solà (* 1955 in Palma de Mallorca ) is a Spanish paleontologist and anthropologist . He is a specialist in Miocene primates . Moyà works at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont . He is married to the German paleontologist Meike Köhler .

Life

Salvador Moyà i Solà is a student of Miquel Crusafont . In 1984 he received his doctorate from the Autonomous University of Barcelona with a thesis on fossil mioocene bovids from the Vallès-Penedès basin in Catalonia . From the 1990s onwards, he focused his research on fossil primates. Since 2006 he has been director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont. Moyà is particularly well-known in his leading role in the discoveries and first descriptions of the following two Miocene primates in Catalonia:

• Dryopithecus laietanus , also called Jordi , on the Can Llobateres estate in Sabadell near Barcelona
• Pierolapithecus catalaunicus , also called Pau , in Els Hostalets de Pierola near the mountain range of Montserrat near Barcelona

In particular, the discovery of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, which was first described in 2004 and which is dated around 13 million years before our time, is considered to be important for the previously poorly documented period of 17 to 12 million years before our time in the primate line. Moyà interprets this primate with its numerous "modern" features as the common ancestor of all great apes and thus as an important link in the evolution towards humans.

Web links

• Salvador Moyà i Solà. Enciclopedia.cat, accessed December 29, 2017 (Catalan). 
• Salvador Moyà Solà. from the ICP website, accessed December 29, 2017 . 
• Salvador Moyà Solà. ICREA, accessed on December 29, 2017 (English, short biography). 
• Salvador Moyà Solà - Publications 1979–2015. Dialnet.unirioja.es, accessed December 29, 2017 (Spanish).