Paläontologie
2022

The vertebrates in the paleontological collection Georg Gasser (1857–1931)

Alexander Wagensommer, Irene Tomelleri, Silvio Renesto, Giuseppa Forte & Evelyn Kustatscher
Abstract

The Museum of Nature South Tyrol houses about 3500 fossils belonging to the early 20th century private collection of Georg Gasser. Vertebrates make up only 10% of this collection but could potentially have acted as an attractor for Gasser’s museum, as vertebrate fossils are often perceived by the non-professional public as more “spectacular” than invertebrates. However, big, complete or otherwise impressive specimens are rare in the collection, a fact that probably reflects the limits – both economical and logistic – that Gasser experienced in his collecting effort. Fish and mammal remains are the most represented, reptiles forming a minority of the specimens in the collection. The collection is clearly biased towards younger periods of Earth history, with about 68 % of the specimens belonging to the Cenozoic, 15 % to the Mesozoic and only 4 % to the Paleozoic. About 13 % are of indeterminate age. The bulk of the collection is from localities within countries that around 1900 belonged to the German speaking world. Some celebrated Fossil-Lagerstätten are represented, but also many less well-known sites.

Keywords
Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Pleistocene, Mammalia, Reptilia, Central Europe

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