Georg Friedrich Jäger, from 1850 Georg Friedrich von Jäger (25 December 1785 – 10 September 1866), was a German physician and paleontologist.

Life

Jäger was born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, the son of physician Christian Friedrich von Jäger and Luise Frieder. An older brother was Carl Christoph Friedrich von Jäger (1773–1828), and he was introduced to natural history at an early age. Georg Friedrich went to study medicine at the

Tübingen University Tübingen (; ) is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three of the 90,000 people ...

, receiving a degree in 1808. After travels through Switzerland and France (where

Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...

allowed him to study collections at the

Jardin des Plantes The Jardin des Plantes (, ), also known as the Jardin des Plantes de Paris () when distinguished from other ''jardins des plantes'' in other cities, is the main botanical garden in France. Jardin des Plantes is the official name in the present da ...

) he returned to practice medicine in Stuttgart, and in 1817 he became a director of the royal natural history cabinet. In 1824 he published on

ichthyosaurs Ichthyosauria is an taxonomy (biology), order of large extinction, extinct marine reptiles sometimes referred to as "ichthyosaurs", although the term is also used for wider clades in which the order resides. Ichthyosaurians thrived during much of ...

and plant fossils discovered by Albert Mohr. He continued publishing on plant fossils, and described some mammal and reptile fossils from Stuttgart. A species of South American snake, ''

Erythrolamprus jaegeri ''Erythrolamprus jaegeri'', commonly known as Jaeger's ground snake, is a species of snake in the subfamily Dipsadinae of the family Colubridae. The species is native to South America. There are two recognized subspecies. Etymology The speci ...

'', is named in his honor. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Jaeger, p. 132).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jäger, Georg Friedrich 1866 deaths 1785 births University of Tübingen alumni Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences Paleontologists