Christoph Gottfried Andreas Giebel (13 September 1820 – 14 November 1881) was a German

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

and

palaeontologist 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 fossi ...

. He was a professor of zoology at the University of Halle where he managed the zoology collections at the museum. His interests were in systematics and paleontology and he opposed Darwinian evolution. He published several works including ''Palaozoologie'' (1846); ''Fauna der Vorwelt'' (1847-1856); ''Deutschlands Petrefacten'' (1852); ''Odontographie'' (1855); ''Lehrbuch der Zoologie'' (1857); and ''Thesaurus ornithologiae'' (1872-1877).

Biography

Giebel was born on 13 September 1820 in

Quedlinburg Quedlinburg () is a town situated just north of the Harz mountains, in the district of Harz in the west of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. As an influential and prosperous trading centre during the early Middle Ages, Quedlinburg became a center of in ...

Prussian Saxony The Province of Saxony (german: link=no, Provinz Sachsen), also known as Prussian Saxony () was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the Free State of Prussia from 1816 until 1944. Its capital was Magdeburg. It was formed by the merge ...

where his father, Gottfried Andreas Giebel was a distillery owner. His mother was Johanna née Kühlholz. He was educated at the

University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...

where he graduated in 1845 with a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

on fossil hyenas. At Halle his instructors were

Ernst Friedrich Germar Ernst Friedrich Germar (3 November 1786 – 8 July 1853) was a German professor and director of the Mineralogical Museum at Halle. As well as being a mineralogist he was interested in entomology and particularly in the Coleoptera and Hemiptera. ...

and

Hermann Burmeister Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister (also known as Carlos Germán Conrado Burmeister) (15 January 1807 – 2 May 1892) was a German Argentine zoologist, entomologist, herpetologist, botany, botanist, and coleopterologist. He served as a professor at ...

. In 1858 he became professor of

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

and director of the museum there. He died on 14 November 1881 at Halle. CGAGiebel 02

Works

Giebel's chief publications were ''Palaeozoologie'' (1846); ''Fauna der Vorwelt'' (1847-1856); ''Deutschlands Petrefacten'' (1852); ''Odontographie'' (1855); ''Lehrbuch der Zoologie'' (1857); ''Thesaurus ornithologiae'' (1872-1877). His 5-volume ''Naturgeschichte des Tierreichs'' (1859–1864) is considered to be a forerunner to ''

Brehms Tierleben ''Brehms Tierleben'' (English title: ''Brehm's Animal Life'') is a scientific reference book, first published in the 1860s by Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829–1884). It was one of the first modern popular zoological treatises. First published in ...

''. With Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz, he was editor of the ''Zeitschrift für Naturwissenschaften''. He is the taxonomic author of the extinct fish genera ''

Asima ''Trigonodon'' is an extinct genus of prehistoric ray-finned fish. See also * Prehistoric fish The evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion. It was during this time that the early chordates deve ...

'' (1848), ''

Elonichthys ''Elonichthys'' is an extinct genus of prehistoric bony fish. The genus is represented by several species from Carboniferous and Permian of Europe, Greenland, South Africa, and North America. Species See also * Prehistoric fish The evo ...

'' (1848), and ''Tharsis'' (1847).The Genera of Fishes ...: From Linnæus to Cuvier, 1758-1833
By David Starr Jordan, Barton Warren Evermann He also described many species of ectoparasitic birdlice.

References

Attribution: *

External links

Thesaurus Ornithologiae (1872-1877)

Die Naturgeschichte des Thierreichs (1860)

Palaozoologie : Entwurf einer systematischen Darstellung der Fauna der Vorwelt
*
Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon (1905)
1820 births 1881 deaths German paleontologists 19th-century German zoologists People from Quedlinburg People from the Province of Saxony Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg faculty {{Germany-zoologist-stub