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Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer
 
 
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Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer (September 3, 1801 - April 2, 1869) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 palaeontologist.

He was born at Frankfurt am Main.

In 1832 von Meyer issued a work entitled Palaeologica, and in course of time he published a series of memoirs on various fossil organic remains: molluscs, crustacean
Crustacean

Crustaceans are a large group of arthropods, comprising almost 52,000 described species , and are usually treated as a subphylum . They include various familiar animals, such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles....
s, fish
Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
es and higher vertebrata, including the Triassic predator Teratosaurus
Teratosaurus

Teratosaurus was a genus of rauisuchian known from the Triassic Stubensandstein of Germany and from the Krasiej?w of Poland. The type specimen was described by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer on the basis of a left maxilla with large teeth, which he declared to be distinct from Belodon....
, the earliest bird Archaeopteryx lithographica (1861), the pterosaur
Pterosaur

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or Order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight....
 Rhamphorhynchus
Rhamphorhynchus (animal)

Rhamphorhynchus , "beak snout", is a genus of long-tailed pterosaurs in the Jurassic period. Less specialized than contemporary, short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs such as Pterodactylus, it had a long tail, stiffened with ligaments, which ended in a characteristic diamond-shaped vane....
, and the prosauropod dinosaur Plateosaurus
Plateosaurus

Plateosaurus is a genus of Plateosauridae prosauropoda dinosaur that lived during the Norian and Rhaetian stages of the Late Triassic Period , around 216 to 199 annum in what is now Europe....
.

In Palaeologica, von Meyer proposed a classification of fossil reptiles into four major groups based on their limbs:



His second group he belatedly termed Pachypodes in 1845, later revising to Pachypoda, from the Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 "pachy-/pa??-" ("stout") and "pous/p???" ("foot").






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Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer (September 3, 1801 - April 2, 1869) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 palaeontologist.

He was born at Frankfurt am Main.

In 1832 von Meyer issued a work entitled Palaeologica, and in course of time he published a series of memoirs on various fossil organic remains: molluscs, crustacean
Crustacean

Crustaceans are a large group of arthropods, comprising almost 52,000 described species , and are usually treated as a subphylum . They include various familiar animals, such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles....
s, fish
Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
es and higher vertebrata, including the Triassic predator Teratosaurus
Teratosaurus

Teratosaurus was a genus of rauisuchian known from the Triassic Stubensandstein of Germany and from the Krasiej?w of Poland. The type specimen was described by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer on the basis of a left maxilla with large teeth, which he declared to be distinct from Belodon....
, the earliest bird Archaeopteryx lithographica (1861), the pterosaur
Pterosaur

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or Order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight....
 Rhamphorhynchus
Rhamphorhynchus (animal)

Rhamphorhynchus , "beak snout", is a genus of long-tailed pterosaurs in the Jurassic period. Less specialized than contemporary, short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs such as Pterodactylus, it had a long tail, stiffened with ligaments, which ended in a characteristic diamond-shaped vane....
, and the prosauropod dinosaur Plateosaurus
Plateosaurus

Plateosaurus is a genus of Plateosauridae prosauropoda dinosaur that lived during the Norian and Rhaetian stages of the Late Triassic Period , around 216 to 199 annum in what is now Europe....
.

In Palaeologica, von Meyer proposed a classification of fossil reptiles into four major groups based on their limbs:

  • Saurians with Toes Similar to those of Living Species (e.g.Teleosaurus
    Teleosaurus

    Teleosaurus was an extinct genus of Teleosauridae crocodyliform that lived during the Middle Jurassic. It was approximately 3 metres in length....
    , Protorosaurus
    Protorosaurus

    Protorosaurus , a lizard-like reptile of the order Prolacertiformes, is the earliest known archosauromorph. It lived during the Late Permian period in Germany, and grew up to 2 meters in length....
    , Streptospondylus
    Streptospondylus

    Streptospondylus is a genus of theropod dinosaur known from the Middle Jurassic period of England, 150 million years ago. Originally described as a crocodilian, five species have been named, several of which may belong to Iguanodon....
    )
  • Saurians with Limbs Similar to Heavy Land Mammals (Iguanodon
    Iguanodon

    Iguanodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived roughly halfway between the first of the swift bipedalism hypsilophodontids and the ornithopods' culmination in the hadrosaurid dinosaurs....
    , Megalosaurus
    Megalosaurus

    Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic Period of Europe . It is significant as the first genus of dinosaur to be described and named....
    )
  • Saurians with Limbs for Swimming (e.g. Plesiosaurus
    Plesiosaurus

    Plesiosaurus was a large , marine sauropterygian reptile that lived during the early part of the Jurassic Period, and is known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England and Germany....
    , Mosasaurus
    Mosasaurus

    Mosasaurus was a genus of mosasaur, a carnivorous, aquatic lizard, somewhat resembling a flippered crocodile, with elongated heavy jaws. The genus lived in the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period , around 70-65 millions years ago in the area of modern Western Europe....
    )
  • Saurians with Flying Limbs (Pterodactylus
    Pterodactylus

    Pterodactylus is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period . It was a carnivore and probably preyed upon fish and other small animals....
    )


His second group he belatedly termed Pachypodes in 1845, later revising to Pachypoda, from the Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 "pachy-/pa??-" ("stout") and "pous/p???" ("foot"). It is interesting to note the relation of this group to Dinosauria, coined a few years earlier by Richard Owen
Richard Owen

Sir Richard Owen Order of the Bath was an English people biologist, comparative anatomy and paleontology.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection....
.

His more elaborate researches were those on the Carboniferous
Carboniferous

The Carboniferous is a geologic period that extends from the end of the Devonian period, about 359.2 ? 2.5 annum , to the beginning of the Permian period, about 299.0 ? 0.8 Ma ...
 amphibia, the Permian
Permian

The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian system" after the ancient kingdom...
 reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
s, the Triassic
Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period that extends from about 251 to 199 annum . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic....
 amphibia and reptiles, and the reptiles of the Lithographic slates; and the results were embodied in his great work Zur Fauna der Vorwelt (1845-1860), profusely illustrated with plates drawn on stone by the author.

He was associated with W Dunker and Karl Alfred von Zittel
Karl Alfred von Zittel

Karl Alfred Ritter von Zittel , Germany palaeontologist, was born at Bahlingen in Baden Germany.He was educated at Heidelberg, Paris and Vienna....
 in the publication of the Palaeontographica, which began in 1851. He was awarded the Wollaston medal
Wollaston Medal

The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831....
 by the Geological Society of London
Geological Society of London

The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"....
 in 1858.