Moritz Hörnes (July 14, 1815 – November 4, 1868) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

. Born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he was educated at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

and graduated with a PhD. He then became an assistant in the Vienna mineralogical museum. He was distinguished for his research on the Cenozoic Mollusca of the

Vienna Basin The Vienna Basin (german: Wiener Becken, cz, Vídeňská pánev, sk, Viedenská kotlina, Hungarian: ''Bécsi-medence'') is a geologically young tectonic burial basin and sedimentary basin in the seam area between the Alps, the Carpathians and t ...

and of Alpine regions. Most of his memoirs were published in the ''Jahrbuch der K. K. geol. Reichsanstalt''. In 1864 he introduced the term Neogene to include

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

and

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58fauna Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as ''Biota (ecology ...

of the lower division being subtropical and gradually giving place in the upper division to

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

forms. He died in Vienna on 4 November 1868. In 1860 the mineral hörnesite was named in his honor by Wilhelm Haidinger, with

Gustav Adolph Kenngott Gustav Adolph Kenngott (January 6, 1818 – March 7, 1897) was a German mineralogist. Biography Kenngott was born in Breslau. After being employed in the Hofmineralien-Cabinett at Vienna. From 1857 to 1893 he was also full professor of miner ...

being its co-describer. The

Florentine Diamond The Florentine Diamond is a lost diamond of Indian origin. It is light yellow in colour with very slight green overtones. It is cut in the form of an irregular (although very intricate) nine-sided 126-facet double rose cut, with a weight of 137.2 ...

was properly weighed and documented and a plaster copy made of it under his supervision.http://objekte.nhm-wien.ac.at/objekt/th1942/ob1873 His son Dr. Rudolf Hörnes (1850–1912), professor of

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

and palaeontology in the

University of Graz The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria. History The univers ...

, also carried on researches among the Cenozoic mollusca, and is author of ''Elemente der Palaeontologie'' (1884).

References

* 1815 births 1868 deaths Austrian paleontologists {{Paleontologist-stub