David Friedrich Weinland (30 August 1829 in

Grabenstetten Grabenstetten is a municipality in the district of Reutlingen in Baden-Württemberg in Germany. It lies within the area of the Celtic Heidengraben. Municipality arrangement Besides the homonymous village Grabenstetten there are no other places t ...

– 19 September 1915 in Hohenwittlingen) 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 novelist. The son of a pastor, Weinland attended the Protestant Seminary in Maulbronn from 1843 to 1847. He studied

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W� ...

1847–51, followed by two semester of studying natural sciences. He earned his PhD in 1852. then worked as an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Berlin. From 1855 he conducted scientific investigations in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean (especially

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

) and worked for three years in Louis Agassiz's microscopical laboratory at Harvard University. In 1859 he returned to Germany as director of the

Frankfurt Zoological Garden The Frankfurt Zoological Garden is the zoo of Frankfurt, Germany. It features over 4,500 animals of more than 510 species on more than 11 hectares. The zoo was founded in 1858 and is the second oldest zoo in Germany, after Berlin Zoological Gard ...

; in this capacity he edited the journal "''Der Zoologische Garten''". and contributed significantly to the enthusiasm for founding zoos, which spread among the middle classes. Following the publication of Otto Hahn's 1880 work, ''Die Meteorite (Chondrite) und ihre Organismen'', Weinland publicly supported Hahn's theory regarding the

chondrite A chondrite is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified, by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primi ...

s. In 1881 Weinland, writing in the popular geographical journal ''Das Ausland'', asserted the correctness of Hahn's attempt to classify the inclusions of the chondrites as organic, although slightly modifying Hahn's original assignment of the

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

, by stating that the chondrites are in fact nothing but fossiliferous rocks, i.e. the

petrified In geology, petrifaction or petrification () is the process by which organic material becomes a fossil through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals. Petrified wood typifies this proce ...

remains of life-forms. He published in 1882 a treatise entitled ''Ueber die in Meteoriten entdeckten Thiereste'' in which he established sixteen new genera, each with multiple

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

. Weinland's novel ''Rulaman'' of 1878 became a bestseller of youth literature in Germany, with half a million copies sold until today. He was the father of chemist Rudolf Friedrich Weinland (1865–1936).

Eponymy

* ''

Eleutherodactylus weinlandi ''Eleutherodactylus weinlandi'' is a species of frog in the family Eleutherodactylidae endemic to eastern Hispaniola; it is found in the Dominican Republic and central Haiti. It is a common, terrestrial frog that occurs in a range of mesic habita ...

'', Weinland's robber frog; circumscribed by

Thomas Barbour Thomas Barbour (August 19, 1884 – January 8, 1946) was an American herpetologist. From 1927 until 1946, he was director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) founded in 1859 by Louis Agassiz at Harvard University in Cambridge, ...

in 1914. * '' Gastrotheca weinlandii'', Weinland's

marsupial frog The marsupial frogs are a disputed family (Amphignathodontidae) in the order Anura. When treated as a separate family, it consists of two genera, '' Gastrotheca'' and '' Flectonotus''. The frogs are native to Neotropical America ( Central and ...

; circumscribed by

Franz Steindachner Franz Steindachner (11 November 1834 in Vienna – 10 December 1919 in Vienna) was an Austrian Zoology, zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. He published over 200 papers on fishes and over 50 papers on reptiles and amphibians. Steindachne ...

in 1892.

Selected works

* ''Ueber den Beutelfrosch'', 1854 – About the marsupial frog. * "On the egg-tooth of snakes and lizards", (published in English in 1857). * "Human cestoides: An essay on the tapeworms of man", (published in English in 1858). * ''Zur Weichthierfauna der Schwäbischen Alb'', 1876 –

Mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

s of the Swabian Alb. * ''Rulaman: Erzählung aus der Zeit des Höhlenmenschen und des Höhlenbären'', 1878 (published over numerous editions) Rulaman, a story from the time of cavemen and cave bears (fiction). * ''Kuning Hartfest: Ein Lebensbild aus der Geschichte unserer deutschen Ahnen'', 1879 – Kuning Hartfest; a biography on the history of our German ancestors * ''Über die in Meteoriten entdeckten Tierreste'', 1882 – About the Animal Remains Discovered in the Meteorites.Ueber die in Meteoriten entdeckten Thiereste
WorldCat permalink

Eponymy

Selected works

References

Further reading