Santiago Roth

Santiago Roth (born June 14, 1850 in Herisau , Switzerland ; † August 4, 1924 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) was a Swiss-Argentine paleontologist .

Life

Kaspar Jakob (Spanish: Santiago) Roth grew up in Herisau, Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden , as the oldest of twelve children. His parents had moved from the canton of Bern .

He attended schools in the nearby city of St. Gallen , where his cantonal school teacher Dr. Friedrich Bernhard Wartmann , also director of the St. Gallen Nature Museum , particularly impressed him. From this well-known botanist he learned to collect and prepare plants.

For economic reasons, the Roth family emigrated to Argentina in the Baradero colony ( Buenos Aires province ) in 1866 . There Roth learned the saddlery trade. In addition, Roth put on a herbarium as well as a butterfly and rock collection.

He married the Swiss-trained teacher Elisabeth Schütz, who had also emigrated to Argentina with her family in 1872 and who later helped him write his work.

From then on, his passion for collecting was the remains of extinct animals, which he found in the wider area. As early as 1878, he was able to give the Dane Dr. Laussen, who had them transported to the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen . This appreciation of his finds inspired him. Another interested party was Prof. Carl Vogt at the University of Geneva . Bone finds from Roth arrived badly damaged in Geneva. In 1880, Roth returned to Switzerland to repair the bones in the laboratory of the museum in Geneva under the supervision of Carl Vogt. There he was able to attend lectures in geology, zoology and osteology at the University of Geneva as an autodidact .

Back in Argentina, he chose the basin of the Rio Paraná and today's Entre Ríos province as research areas in the pampas . The results led to one of Roth's first publications.

The discovery of a human skeleton in the same place as the glyptodon shell of a giant mammal, known as the skull of Fontezuelas (now in the Copenhagen Zoological Museum), proved the simultaneity of humans and giant mammals in the pampas formation.

Roth was looking for other buyers for his collections of bone finds and therefore returned to Switzerland with the whole family in 1887. On the recommendation of geologist Prof. Albert Heim , ETH Zurich , the federal government and the canton of Zurich bought his collection No. 5, which is now kept in the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich and includes a giant sloth (Megatherium) and a giant armadillo (Glyptodon). A special exhibition in 2000 included this Roth collection. During this Swiss stay, Roth not only attended lectures, but also accompanied Albert Heim on hydrogeological investigations into underground watercourses in Switzerland. He later used this knowledge in his adopted home Argentina.

After the first arduous excursions to Central Patagonia and the mouth of the Rio Negro around 1885, further paleontological research trips followed in 1891 together with Dr. Florentino Machon, another Swiss emigrant, along the Rio Negro, Limay ( Nahuel Huapi Lake) and Chubut rivers .

Dr. Francisco Moreno (known as Perito Moreno , the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia named after him ), first director of the La Plata Museum in the then new capital La Plata of the Province of Buenos Aires, appointed Roth head of the paleontological department in 1895. Head of another department in the same museum was his friend Florentino Ameghino , with whom Roth held scientific disputes.

As delegates of the Argentine government, Moreno and Roth worked in 1897–1899 and again in 1902 in the border clearing between Argentina and Chile in the Andes. On behalf of the state and its delegate Moreno, Roth selected a location for a new settlement on Lake Nahuel Huapi, applied for land rights to the state of Argentina on behalf of Swiss and German settlers already resident in the area, thereby creating the basis for the future city San Carlos de Bariloche . Emilio Frey , another Argentine of Swiss descent, who worked as a topographer and map maker, was a member of the Argentine commission to clean up the borders between Argentina and Chile, headed by Moreno . In contrast to Moreno and Roth, Frey later took up residence in Bariloche and became an important figure there.

A publication from 1903 was dedicated to the extinct ungulates Notoungulatas , which were only found in South America.

In 1905 Roth was appointed titular professor of paleontology at the University of La Plata. As director of the Geological-Topographical Institute of the Province of Buenos Aires, he organized over 100 boreholes for drinking water from 1908 over a period of 9 years. From then on his publications were written in Spanish. He earned great merit when he improved the drinking water supply by means of groundwater wells on behalf of the government in the rain-poor area of ​​the province of Santiago del Estero near the towns of Añatuya and Suncho Corral .

On one of his expeditions to the Salta area, he fell ill with malaria. This made further work more difficult.

He undertook the last arduous expedition to Patagonia in 1921/1922. In 1923 he was able to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary with his family with 20 grandchildren.

Honors

• Honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich, 1900
• Member of the International Committee of Geological Correlation , New York, a body of only eight scholars

literature

• MS Fernández: Catalog des principales publications du Prof. Dr. Santiago Roth. In: Negotiations of the Swiss Natural Research Society. Volume 106, 1925, pp. 38-41.
• F. Machon: Le géologue Prof. Dr. Santiago Roth, 1850-1924. In: Verh. Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft. Aarau 1925, pp. 35-41. (with catalog raisonné)
• L. Kraglievich: En Memoria del Doctor Santiago Roth, Geólogo y Paleontólogo. In: Physis, Buenos Aires. No. 7, 1925, pp. 412-417.
• W. Schiller: Santiago Roth. In: Geologische Rundschau. Volume 16, No. 4, Berlin 1925, pp. 325-327.
• G. Weigelt: Santiago Roth 1850-1924. A Bernese as a scientific pioneer in South America. In: Bern journal for history and local history. Volume 13, No. 1, Paul Haupt, Bern 1951, pp. 19-39.

Web links

• Stephanie Summermatter: Santiago Roth. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ S. Roth: Observations on the origin and age of the pampas formation in Argentina. In: Journal of the German Geological Society. Berlin 1888, pp. 375-464.
2. ↑ B. Schultess: Contributions to the knowledge of the Xenarthra on the basis of the Santiago Roth'schen collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich . Albert Kundig, Geneva 1920 (dissertation at the University of Zurich)
3. ↑ C. Caude: El mamifero misterioso. The giant sloth and its relatives. Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-9521043-4-5 .
4. ↑ Santiago Roth: Los Ungulados Sudamericanos. In: Anales del Museo de La Plata (Sección Paleontológica). No. 5, 1903, pp. 1-36.