Moritz Hörnes (July 14, 1815 – November 4, 1868) was an
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous c ...
n
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 foss ...
.
Born in
Vienna, he was educated at the
University of Vienna and graduated with a PhD. He then became an assistant in the Vienna mineralogical museum. He was distinguished for his research on the
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configurat ...
Mollusca of the
Vienna Basin
The Vienna Basin (german: Wiener Becken, cz, Vídeňská pánev, sk, Viedenská kotlina, Hungarian: ''Bécsi-medence'') is a geologically young tectonic burial basin and sedimentary basin in the seam area between the Alps, the Carpathians and t ...
and of Alpine regions. Most of his memoirs were published in the ''Jahrbuch der K. K. geol. Reichsanstalt''.
In 1864 he introduced the term
Neogene to include
Miocene and
Pliocene, as these formations are not always to be clearly separated: the
fauna of the lower division being
subtropical and gradually giving place in the upper division to
Mediterranean forms. He died in Vienna on 4 November 1868.
In 1860 the mineral
hörnesite was named in his honor by
Wilhelm Haidinger
Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger (or Wilhelm von Haidinger, or most often Wilhelm Haidinger) (5 February 179519 March 1871) was an Austrian mineralogist.
Early life
Haidinger's father was the mineralogist Karl Haidinger (1756–1797), who died w ...
, with
Gustav Adolph Kenngott
Gustav Adolph Kenngott (January 6, 1818 – March 7, 1897) was a German mineralogy, mineralogist.
Biography
Kenngott was born in Wrocław, Breslau. After being employed in the Hofmineralien-Cabinett at
Vienna. From 1857 to 1893 he was also fu ...
being its co-describer.
The
Florentine Diamond
The Florentine Diamond is a lost diamond of Indian origin. It is light yellow in colour with very slight green overtones. It is cut in the form of an irregular (although very intricate) nine-sided 126-facet double rose cut, with a weight of 137.2 ...
was properly weighed and documented and a plaster copy made of it under his supervision.
[http://objekte.nhm-wien.ac.at/objekt/th1942/ob1873]
His son Dr.
Rudolf Hörnes (1850–1912), professor of
geology and palaeontology in the
University of Graz
The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria.
History
The univers ...
, also carried on researches among the
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configurat ...
mollusca, and is author of ''Elemente der Palaeontologie'' (1884).
References
*
1815 births
1868 deaths
Austrian paleontologists
{{Paleontologist-stub