Tor Ørvig (27 September 1916 – 27 February 1994) was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

-born

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used b ...

paleontologist 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 foss ...

who explored the

histology Histology, also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vi ...

of early

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxon, taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with vertebral column, backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the ...

s. He was professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He described a possible post-

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

coelacanth The coelacanths ( ) are fish belonging to the order Actinistia that includes two extant species in the genus '' Latimeria'': the West Indian Ocean coelacanth (''Latimeria chalumnae''), primarily found near the Comoro Islands off the east c ...

fossil from the

Paleocene The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name is a combination of the Ancient Greek ''pal ...

epoch.

References

Swedish paleontologists 20th-century Swedish zoologists Paleozoologists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1916 births 1994 deaths Swedish ichthyologists Norwegian emigrants to Sweden {{Sweden-scientist-stub