Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen (10 November 1884 – 2 May 1966) was a Dutch-born South African

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

Biography

Born at

Vlissingen Vlissingen (; ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an importan ...

, around the age of six he moved with his parents to the

South African Republic The South African Republic (, abbreviated ZAR; ), also known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer republics, Boer republic in Southern Africa which existed from 1852 to 1902, when it was annexed into the British Empire as a result ...

. When British forces occupied

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

in 1900 he was deported to the Netherlands, where he took classes and qualified as a mining engineer at the technical university in Delft. He later received his doctorate with a thesis on the structure of the

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

strata of

Gotland Gotland (; ; ''Gutland'' in Gutnish), also historically spelled Gottland or Gothland (), is Sweden's largest island. It is also a Provinces of Sweden, province/Counties of Sweden, county (Swedish län), Municipalities of Sweden, municipality, a ...

(1910). He then returned to South Africa, where from 1910 to 1921, he worked as a paleontologist at the

Transvaal Museum The Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, formerly the Transvaal Museum, is a natural history museum situated in Pretoria, South Africa. It is located on Paul Kruger Street, between Visagie and Minnaar Streets, opposite the Pretoria City ...

. Within this time period, he focused his attention on fossil reptiles of the

Karoo The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe Khoemana (also known as !Orakobab or Korana) word is a semidesert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its extent is ...

. From 1922 to 1950 he served as director of National Museum, Bloemfontein. He is credited with collecting thousands of

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

fossils from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

strata of Zululand.Van Hoepen, Dr Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas
S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science He died at

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

Taxa

He is the taxonomic authority of numerous fossil taxa, such as the therapsid family

Pylaecephalidae Pylaecephalidae is a family (biology), family of dicynodont therapsids that includes ''Diictodon'', ''Robertia'', and ''Prosictodon'' from the Permian of South Africa. Pylaecephalids were small burrowing dicynodonts with long tusks. The family w ...

and the

mollusk Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The ...

family Megatrigoniidae. He also described the extinct reptile genera '' Pedeticosaurus'' and '' Eucnemesaurus'',A Revision of the Parainfraclass Archosauria Cope, 1869
/ref> as well as the

dicynodont Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammalian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means 'two dog tooth'. Members of the group possessed a horny, t ...

genus '' Sintocephalus''. In 1932 he circumscribed both '' Kolpochoerus'', a prehistoric pig genus, and '' Megalotragus'', an extinct antelope genus.Megalotragus van Hoepen, 1932
GBIF Taxa with the specific epithet of ''vanhoepeni'' commemorate his name.

Published works

He was the author of around 80 scientific writings, publishing works in the fields of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

and

ethnology Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Sci ...

as well as in

paleontology Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure ge ...

. * "Contributions to the knowledge of the reptiles of the Karroo Formation. 6. Further dinosaurian material in the Transvaal Museum", ''Annals of the Transvaal Museum'' 7(2): 93-141.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoepen, Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van 1884 births 1966 deaths People from Vlissingen Dutch paleontologists Delft University of Technology alumni Dutch emigrants Immigrants to the South African Republic