Mátyás Vremir (13 November 1970 – 24 July 2020)
was a Romanian
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and History of Earth, history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the Field research, ...
and
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 ...
.
Education and career
Vremir was born on 13 November 1970 in
Cluj
Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...
, the son of artists
Mircea Vremir and Ildikó Kováts.
He studied geology at
Babeş-Bolyai University, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1999 and a master's degree in 2001.
After graduating he had a varied career as a teacher, geological consultant for the
petroleum industry
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry, includes the global processes of hydrocarbon exploration, exploration, extraction of petroleum, extraction, oil refinery, refining, Petroleum transport, transportation (often by oil tankers ...
in Central Africa and with his own firm in Cluj, and owner of a
Tatar
Tatar may refer to:
Peoples
* Tatars, an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar"
* Volga Tatars, a people from the Volga-Ural region of western Russia
* Crimean Tatars, a people from the Crimea peninsula by the B ...
-themed bar.
He also worked for several museums in Hungary and was affiliated with the
Transylvanian Museum Society.
Well known for his eye for
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...
s, he worked as a palaeontological contractor in Crimea and Bavaria, and conducted his own reconnaissance projects in Romania, in collaboration with American palaeontologist
Mark Norell
Mark Allen Norell (born July 26, 1957) is an American vertebrate paleontologist. He is currently the chairman of paleontology and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is best known as the discoverer of the first ...
.
He is credited with the discovery of ''
Balaur bondoc
''Balaur bondoc'' is a species of paravian theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period, in what is now Romania. It is the type species of the monotypic genus ''Balaur'', after the '' balaur'' (), a dragon of Romanian folklore. The specifi ...
'', a poodle-sized dinosaur;
an
Azhdarchidae
Azhdarchidae (from the Persian word , , a dragon-like creature in Persian mythology) is a family of pterosaurs known primarily from the Late Cretaceous Period, though an isolated vertebra apparently from an azhdarchid is known from the Early Cre ...
specimen nicknamed "Dracula" that is the largest-known
pterosaur
Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...
;
and ''
Litovoi tholocephalos'', a
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...
mammal exhibiting
insular dwarfism
Insular dwarfism, a form of phyletic dwarfism, is the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands. This natural process is disti ...
.
Personal life
Vremir was married to Márta Veress and had two sons.
He died of cancer on 24 July 2020.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vremir, Mátyás
1970 births
2020 deaths
Scientists from Cluj-Napoca
Romanian people of Hungarian descent
Romanian geologists
Romanian paleontologists
Babeș-Bolyai University alumni