Johann Andreas Wagner (21 March 1797 – 17 December 1861) was a German

palaeontologist 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 ...

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

and

archaeologist 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, ...

who wrote several important works on palaeontology. He was also a pioneer of biogeographical theory.

Career

Wagner was born in Nuremberg and received a PhD from the University of Erlangen in 1826 after spending some time in the University of Wurzburg (1814-16). He worked as a privatdozent at Erlangen after a tour that included a visit to Paris. In 1832 he became an adjunct to

Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (26 April 1780, in Hohenstein-Ernstthal – 30 June 1860, in Laufzorn, a village in Oberhaching) was a German physician, Natural philosophy, naturalist and Romantic psychology, psychologist. Biography He began his ...

at the Munich zoological collection. In 1835 he was elected to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Science. In 1845 he organized a survey of the distributions of 44 vertebrates (16 mammals, 27 birds, 1 reptile) across the districts of Bavaria under auspices of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1849 he was made third curator for the zoological collections. He was the author of ''Die Geographische Verbreitung der Säugethiere Dargestellt'' (1844–1846). In this work he recognized the zone around Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua as being occupied by a mix of

Nearctic The Nearctic realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting the Earth's land surface. The Nearctic realm covers most of North America, including Greenland, Central Florida, and the highlands of Mexico. The parts of North America ...

and

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In biogeogra ...

fauna. This had also been suggested by Karl Illiger and Heinrich Lichtenstein. But Wagner produced some of the earliest biogeographical maps. He also published the South American mollusc work of Von Spix. Wagner was a Christian creationist. In his theory on the distributions of mammals he assumed a single flood based on which he explained his fossil finds. He pointed out the history of domestic animals supported ideas in the Bible of a repopulation of the earth from around Mount Ararat.

Pikermi

In his travels to the fossil beds of Pikermi, Wagner discovered and described fossil remains of

mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...

, '' Dinotherium'', ''

Hipparion ''Hipparion'' is an extinct genus of three-toed, medium-sized equine belonging to the extinct tribe Hipparionini, which lived about 10-5 million years ago. While the genus formerly included most hipparionines, the genus is now more narrowly defi ...

'', two species of giraffe, antelope and others. His collaboration with Johannes Roth on these fossils became a major textbook in palaeontology, known as "Roth & Wagner", in which the "bones were much broken, and no complete skeleton was found with all the parts united".

Legacy

Wagner is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South American snake, '' Diaphorolepis wagneri''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Wagner, J.A.", p. 278).

Bibliography

* 1844-1846. ''Die Geographische Verbreitung der Säugethiere Dargestellt''. * Johann Andreas Wagner 1897
''Monographie der gattung Pomatias Studer''

References

External links

* ttps://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/85045 Die geographische verbreitung der säugthiere dargestellt(1841-46)
Geschichte der Urwelt
(1857-58) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Johann Andreas 1797 births 1861 deaths Paleozoologists German paleontologists Archaeologists from Bavaria German curators German science writers German taxonomists 19th-century German zoologists Christian creationists Science teachers Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich German male non-fiction writers 19th-century German male writers Writers from Nuremberg