Walter Robert Gross

Walter Robert Gross (born August 20, 1903 in Katlakalns, Livonia Gouvernement , (today part of Riga , Latvia ); † June 9, 1974 in Tübingen ) was a German paleontologist and researcher of the early history of primitive "fish".

Life

Walter Robert Gross was born as the son of the German-Baltic pastor Erwin Gross in Katlakalns. 1907–1918 he lived with his parents in Straupe . From an early age he was interested in living things and soon became interested in fossils, e.g. B. in Bach pushed his home carefully and began to collect them. At 18 he joined the Natural Science Association in Riga and made contact with the Latvian Natural History Museum.

After his military service, Gross moved to Germany to study and enrolled in zoology and palaeontology in Marburg an der Lahn . In 1929 he continued his studies at the Berlin Humboldt University after he had finally decided on paleontology. On the basis of his investigations on the Devonian Asterolepis ( Placodermi ) from the sediments of the Gauja River , he received his doctorate in Berlin in 1931, stayed at the university, became a lecturer here in 1936 and an extraordinary in 1943. Appointed professor. He mainly worked on Estonian and Latvian Placodermi and low Teleostomi , but was soon called up for the Wehrmacht; he was taken prisoner and came to Berlin in 1946, but not back to the Humboldt University until 1949, where he is now ord. Professor, institute director and head of the paleontological department of the Museum of Natural History .

After the Wall was built , he stayed with his wife Ursula and his three children - on the occasion of a palaeontology congress in Hamburg in August 1961 - in the Federal Republic of Germany and, on the recommendation of Otto Schindewolf, became an associate professor in Tübingen , where he retired in 1969. Soon afterwards he fell ill with cancer, which he succumbed to in 1974.

Grossius aragonensis , a Devonian sarcopterygian from Spain, imaginatively reconstructed.

Research fields

Gross' merit lies mainly in the micropalaeontological field. There are countless remains ( ichthyolites ) of the primitive "fish" , but mostly only fragments (teeth, scales, spines, dermal plates), rarely articulated skeletons (or at least larger parts of them). Nevertheless, thanks to new preparation techniques, it was possible to set up phylogenetic rows, i.e. the relationships between the z. Some of the animals that are over 400,000,000 years old have to be brightened up more and more.

Honors

In 1972 he became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society . In the same year he was awarded an honorary doctorate in natural sciences at the 500th anniversary of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

On his 70th birthday, the researcher, now recognized as a world capacity, was honored with a volume (A 143) of the Palaeontographica (in which the majority of his around 90 publications had appeared), which only contains works on (especially paleozoic ) fish fossils. In 1987, on the occasion of a symposium in Beijing, various activities were decided to put Walter Gross' importance for vertebrate palaeontology and in general the contributions of his Baltic homeland to the study of the evolution of primitive "fish" in the right light. Grossius is one named in his honor Fish taxon .

Publications (selection)

• 1931. Asterolepis ornata Eichw. and the Antiarchi problem.- Palaeontographica A 75: 1-62.
• 1933. The fish of the Baltic Devonian.- Palaeontographica A 79: 1-74.
• 1935. Studies on the exoskeleton of fossil agnaths and fish.- Palaeontographica A 83: 1–60.
• 1940. Acanthodes and placoderms from Heterostius -Layer of Estonia and Latvia.- Ann. Soc. Reb. Nature. Invest. Univer. Tartu 46: 1-89.
• 1941. The Bothriolepis -species of Cellulosa -Mergel Latvia.- Kungl. Svenska Vetenskaps-akademiens Handlingar 19 (5): 1–79.
• 1947. The agnathes and acanthodes of the Upper Silurian Beyrichia lime.- Palaeontographica A 96: 91–158.
• 1950. The paleontological and stratigraphic importance of the vertebrate fauna of the Old Red and the marine ancient Paleozoic strata. Berlin (Akademie-Vlg.)
• 1971. Downtonic and dittonic acanthodic remains of the Baltic Sea area.- Palaeontographica A 136: 1–82
• 1973. Small scales, fin spines, and teeth from fish from European and North American devonian bonebeds.- Palaeontographica A 142: 51–155.
• 1974. Parish and pastorate Roop in southern Livland 1907–1917.- Tübingen. 61 pp.

Remarks

1. ↑ Roop is the German name of Straupe.

literature

• Ervīns Lukševičs (2002): Valteram Grosam - 100. Dabas un Vēstures kalendārs 2003. Rīga, Zinātne. 212-219.
• Ervīns Lukševičs and Ģirts Stinkulis (2004): Earth and Environment Sciences - The Second Gross Symposium “Advances of Palaeoichthyology” .- Acta Universitatis Latviensis 679: 10-13.
• Hans-Peter Schultze (1974): Obituary for Walter Robert Gross.- Paläontol. Line 48: 143-148, 1 fig. (Portrait http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02985948 )
• Hans-Peter Schultze (1996): Walter R. Gross, a palaeontologist in the tower of 20th century Europe.- Modern Geology 20: 209-233.
• Susan Turner (1988): International Palaeozoic microvertebrate correlation programs - Ichthyolite Issues 1: 2.

Web links

• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Walter Robert Gross. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital