Melchior Neumayr (24 October 1845 – 29 January 1890) was an

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 ...

from

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

and the son of Max von Neumayr, a Bavarian Minister of State. He specialized on the Jurassic and Cretaceous of the Alps. Neumayr introduced the concept of the Tethys sea in 1885, calling it the Jurassic seaway. The name "''Tethys''" was given by his father-in-law Eduard Suess.

Life and work

Neumayr was born in Munich but grew up in Stuttgart where his father, Max von Neumayr, was an ambassador. He went to the Munich Gymnasium and then started with law studies at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

but gave it up for the natural sciences which he completed at

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

studying under Beneke and

Robert Bunsen Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (; 30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...

. He received a doctorate in 1867. After some experience in field-geology under Karl Wilhelm von Gümbel, he joined the

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n geological survey in 1868. Four years later he returned to Heidelberg, but in 1873 he was appointed professor of palaeontology in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, and occupied this post until his death. His more detailed researches pertained to the

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...

and

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 ...

ammonites Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...

and to

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

freshwater

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

; in these studies he sought to trace the descent of the species. Based on the gastropod fauna, Neumayr established the idea of what he called a Jurassic seaway extending from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia (also called as the central Mediterranean) which had flooded wide tracts of Eurasia. This was named by Suess in 1893 as the Tethys, named after the sister of Okeanos, the Greek ocean god. He dealt also with the zones of climate during the

and

periods. He postulated the idea that during those periods, equatorial marine fauna differed from that of the two temperate zones, and that the marine fauna of the latter two zones also differed from that of the arctic zone, much as the faunas of similar zones differ from each other in the present day; see his ''Über klimatische Zonen während der Jura und Kreidezeit'' (Denkschr. K. Akad. Wiss. Wien, 1883); he was author also of ''Erdgeschichte'' (2 vols, 1887); and ''Die Stämme des Thierreiches'' (vol. 1 only, 1889). Neumayr married Paula, daughter of his colleague

Eduard Suess Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 – 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and ...

in 1879 and they had three daughters. He was a keen climber and was a member of the Deutscher und Oesterreich Alpin Verein but gave up membership in 1872 and in later life heart problems prevented him from outdoor activity but he continued to write in the Mittheilungen of the Deutscher und Oesterreich Alpin Verein.

References

External links

* Erdegesichte (1886) * * * 1845 births 1890 deaths Academic staff of the University of Vienna Heidelberg University alumni People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Paleontologists from Austria-Hungary {{Austria-bio-stub