Volker Fahlbusch

Volker Fahlbusch (* 22. February 1934 in Celle , † the 30th October 2008 in Munich ) was a German vertebrate - a paleontologist and professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). He dealt with fossil mammals , primarily with fossil rodents , several of which he described scientifically for the first time .

After graduating from high school in Celle and an internship at Mobil Oil (today "ExxonMobil") in oil exploration , Fahlbusch studied geology at the University of Göttingen and the University of Munich with a thesis on the Northern Limestone Alps in 1960. He then turned to paleontology under Richard Dehm Mammals, and especially fossil hamsters (cricetides) from finds in the Tertiary of the freshwater molasse of Bavaria, on which he received his doctorate in 1964 . He then taught at the Institute of Paleontology. In 1965 he spent half a year at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where he carried out scientific excavations in the Rocky Mountains with Mary R. Dawson and Craig Black . In 1968 he became a Research Associate at the Carnegie Museum. He completed his habilitation in 1969 in Munich (population shifts in tertiary rodents, a study on the Oligocene and Miocene Eomyidae in Europe) and was then a private lecturer and later professor at the university (under the Bavarian State Collection). From 1977 to 1979 he was dean of the Faculty of Geosciences. He turned down a call to Mainz in 1979 to succeed Heinz Tobien .

In particular, he examined the tribal history and biostratigraphy of fossil rodents in Tertiary Europe on the basis of their teeth. He played a major role in establishing a corresponding biostratigraphy of the Neogene in Europe and organized two conferences on this (1988, 1992, Reisensburg Castle near Günzburg).

In addition, in decades of excavation campaigns (beginning in the early 1960s under Dehm), he opened up the important Miocene site of Sandelzhausen . In 2005 he organized a symposium in nearby Mainburg .

Since the 1980s he has also worked with the IVPP in Beijing on excavations in Inner Mongolia (in Ertemte, Harr Obo).

He was on the advisory board of the Paleontological Society (in which he was co-founder of the vertebrate paleontology working group in 1974), on the sub-commission for tertiary stratigraphy and on the advisory board of the Messel pit .

He had been married since 1964 and had one daughter.

Fonts

• Volker Fahlbusch, Renate Liebreich, Friends of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Historical Geology Munich e. V. (Hrsg.): Hare deer and dog bear: Chronicle of the tertiary fossil deposit Sandelzhausen near Mainburg . Publishing house Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Munich 1996

literature

• Ursula B. Göhlich u. a. In memoriam of Prof. Dr. Volker Fahlbusch , Zitteliana A 48/48, 2009, pp. 3–12