Ulrich Lehmann (paleontologist)

Ulrich Walter Franz Lehmann (born March 7, 1916 in Hamberge , Stormarn district ; † April 6, 2003 ) was a German paleontologist.

Life

Lehmann was the son of a pastor and grew up in Eckernförde. He wanted to become a forest officer, but after the then mandatory labor service he studied geography and history, first at the University of Jena and then at the Humboldt University in Berlin, additionally philosophy and English. But a lecture by Hans Stille brought him to geology. After a trip to the Far East as a cabin boy, he studied geology in Königsberg, Baton Rouge from 1937 and in Göttingen from 1938 (with Walter Schriel , Carl W. Correns , Friedrich Drescher-Kaden , Hermann Schmidt , Othenio Abel , Otto Sickenberg , Gustav Angenheister ). After military service in France in 1939/40, from which he was dismissed because of hearing problems, he received his doctorate in 1941 with a thesis on fossil aurochs in Göttingen. In 1944 he completed his habilitation with Karl Beurlen in Munich in paleontology with a thesis on mastodons . After the war he started mapping for the Institute for Regional Planning in Göttingen from 1948. In 1951 he became Otto H. Schindewolf's assistant and private lecturer at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, and from 1953 he was curator at the Geological State Institute in Hamburg. After a guest professorship at Southern Illinois University in 1957/58 , he was an adjunct professor at the University of Hamburg from 1958 , where he became a scientific adviser and professor in 1966 and a department director and professor in 1970. 1970 to 1974 he was managing director of the Geological-Paleontological Institute. In 1981 he retired.

Lehmann dealt specifically with mammalian fossils and ammonites . He is known for some standard works in paleontology. His ammonites book with Hillmer and his invertebrate paleontology textbook also appeared in English translation. In addition to Europe, he collected in Libya and Spitsbergen, where he wanted to look for fossil mammals that were supposed to confirm a land bridge from North America to Northern Europe in the Paleogene . In 1978 he traveled to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Bangladesh to study.

In 1966 he confirmed the sexual dimorphism of ammonites (with generally larger females) to Eleganticeras , previously discovered by John Callomon and Henryk Makowski (1962/63) , and he recognized that the aptychus, which had been the cover of the housing until then, was the jaw apparatus of the ammonites. By systematically dismantling the fossils (which used to be a reluctance to do so in connection with destruction) he identified the rasp tongue (radula), eyes, gills and other anatomical details.

In 1991 he became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society and he was an honorary member of the Austrian Geological Society.

In 1945 he married Elfriede Thiele, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

literature

• Obituary by Friedhelm Thiedig in Paläontologische Zeitschrift, Volume 78, 2004, p. 1

Fonts

• Ammonites, their life and their environment, Enke 1976, 2nd edition 1987
• with Gero Hillmer: Invertebrates of prehistoric times: Guide to the systematic paleontology of invertebrates. Spectrum Akademischer Verlag, 4th edition 1997, ISBN 3-432-90654-4 (first 1980 Enke Verlag)
• Paleontological dictionary. Stuttgart: Schweizerbartsche Verlagbuchhandlung , 4th edition 1996, ISBN 3-432-83574-4 (first Enke Verlag 1964)
• Development of Life, Hannover, Jaeger 1982