Otto Karl Josef Zdansky
[Katharina Kniefac]
Otto Karl Josef Zdansky
// Memorial Book of National Socialism at the University of Vienna (28 November 1894,
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
– 26 December 1988,
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...
) 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 ...
n
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 ...
.
Biography
He graduated from the Philosophical School at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...
in Paleontology on March 21, 1921, with the academic degree 'Dr. phil.' (dissertation: 'Über die Temporalregion des Schildkrötenschädels').
[
He is best known for his work in ]China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, where he, as an assistant to Johan Gunnar Andersson
Johan Gunnar Andersson (3 July 1874 – 29 October 1960)"Andersson, Johan Gunnar" in ''Encyclopædia Britannica, The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 385. was a Sweden, Swedish arc ...
, discovered a fossil tooth of the Peking Man
Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'') is a subspecies of ''Homo erectus, H. erectus'' which inhabited the Zhoukoudian Cave of northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudi ...
in 1921 at the Dragon Bone Hill
Zhoukoudian Area () is a town and an area located on the east Fangshan District, Beijing, China. It borders Nanjiao and Fozizhuang Townships to its north, Xiangyang, Chengguan and Yingfeng Subdistricts to its east, Shilou and Hangcunhe Towns to ...
, although he did not disclose it until 1926 when he published it in ''Nature'' after an analysis by Davidson Black
Davidson Black, FRS (July 25, 1884 – March 15, 1934) was a Canadian paleoanthropologist, best known for his naming of ''Sinanthropus pekinensis'' (now ''Homo erectus pekinensis''). He was Chairman of the Geological Survey of China and a ...
.
He is also famous for his excavations of mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
fossils in Baode County
Baode () is a county in the northwest of Shanxi province, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the west. It is under the administration of Xinzhou city, and is its westernmost county-level division.
Baode is known for Jujube
Jujube (), s ...
area (Pao Te Hsien), Shanxi Province
Shanxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is ...
. Zdansky in 1923 excavated the sauropod
Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
''Euhelopus
''Euhelopus'' is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 145 and 133 million years ago during the Berriasian and Valanginian stages of the Early Cretaceous in what is now Shandong Province in China. It was a large quadrupedal herbivore. U ...
zdanskyi'' named after him.
References
Further reading
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1894 births
1984 deaths
Austrian paleontologists
Austrian people of Polish descent
Austrian emigrants to Sweden
{{Austria-scientist-stub