Karl Beurlen (17 April 1901 – 27 December 1985) was a German

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 fossi ...

.Rieppel, Olivier. (2012). ''Karl Beurlen (1901-1985), Nature mysticism, and Aryan Paleontology''. ''

Journal of the History of Biology The ''Journal of the History of Biology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the history of biology as well as philosophical and social issues confronting biology. It is published by Springer Science+Business Media and the edito ...

'' 45: 253-299. Beurlen was born in

Aalen Aalen () is a former Free Imperial City located in the eastern part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, about east of Stuttgart and north of Ulm. It is the seat of the Ostalbkreis district and is its largest town. It is also the large ...

. He attended

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-Wü ...

. He completed a PhD in 1923.Levit, Georgy S; Olsson, Lennart. (2007). ''Evolution on Rails Mechanisms and Levels of Orthogenesis''. In Volker Wissemann. ''Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology 11/2006''. Universitätsverlag Göttingen. pp. 115-119 Beurlen was a proponent of

orthogenesis Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some go ...

and saltational evolution. He used the term ''metakinesis'' (coined by

Otto Jaekel Otto Max Johannes Jaekel (21 February 1863 – 6 March 1929) was a German paleontologist and geologist. Biography Jaekel was born in Neusalz (Nowa Sól), Prussian Silesia, the son of a builder and the youngest of seven children. He studied at ...

) to describe sudden changes of development in organisms. He also invented the term ''palingenesis'' as a mechanism for his orthogenetic theory of evolution. He was an assistant of

Edwin Hennig Edwin Hennig (27 April 1882 – 12 November 1977) was a German paleontologist. Career Edwin Hennig was one of five children of a merchant who died when Hennig was 10 years old. Starting in 1902, Hennig studied natural sciences, anthropolog ...

.Stindl, Reinhard. (2014)
''The telomeric sync model of speciation: species-wide telomere erosion triggers cycles of transposon-mediated genomic rearrangements, which underlie the saltatory appearance of nonadaptive characters''
''

Naturwissenschaften ''The Science of Nature'', formerly ''Naturwissenschaften'', is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media covering all aspects of the natural sciences relating to questions of biological significance. I ...

'' 101: 163-186. He was a proponent of

National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

ideology and wrote about the

Aryan race The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...

. He was director of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München.

References

1901 births 1985 deaths German paleontologists Orthogenesis {{Germany-scientist-stub

See also

References