Otto Karl Josef ZdanskyKatharina 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 fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the ...

) 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 populou ...

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 fos ...

Biography

He graduated from the Philosophical School at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public university, public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the Geogra ...

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 List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, where he, as an assistant to

Johan Gunnar Andersson Johan Gunnar Andersson (3 July 1874 – 29 October 1960)"Andersson, Johan Gunnar" in '' The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 385. was a Swedish archaeologist, paleontologist and ...

, discovered a fossil tooth of the

Peking Man Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'') is a subspecies of '' 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 Zhoukoudian Cave has ...

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 ...

, although he did not disclose it until 1926 when he published it in ''Nature'' after an analysis by Davidson Black. 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), fu ...

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 (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level ...

. 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 ...

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 ...

'' Euhelopus zdanskyi'' named after him.

Biography

References

Further reading