A Tribute to Burkart Engesser
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Swiss J Palaeontol (2012) 131:1–6 DOI 10.1007/s13358-011-0037-0 A tribute to Burkart Engesser Loı¨c Costeur • Olivier Maridet • Zhanxiang Qiu • Zhuding Qiu Published online: 13 January 2012 Ó Akademie der Naturwissenschaften Schweiz (SCNAT) 2012 Burkart Engesser is one the most renowned specialists on widely known as he illustrated the hundreds of teeth him- Cenozoic rodents and insectivores worldwide. His career as self, with incredible accuracy and remarkable aesthetics. palaeontologist started 50 years ago as he entered the Right after this, he was invited to the United States, at Natural History Museum Basel (NMB) in 1962 to work as the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh as a visiting museum assistant of Johannes Hu¨rzeler. This period lasted until specialist for 9 months. There he further developed his 1968 when he decided to undertake a PhD thesis under the field experience in various regions and met several mam- supervision of Hu¨rzeler who was then head of the mal specialists including the curator for vertebrates, Dr. Department of Osteology at the NMB and honorary lec- Mary Dawson, who participates in this volume. turer at the University of Basel. He studied the famous After coming back to Basel, he had the chance to take Middle Miocene locality of Anwil located in the vicinity of over the curator position at the NMB after Hu¨rzeler’s Basel. Burkart then started to be interested in small animals retirement until his own retirement in 2007. His Museum because the rich locality mainly yielded tiny teeth, which work includes research, for which he dedicated a large part he started to fall in love with. There is indeed an impal- of his time publishing more than 50 papers in various pable emotion in bringing tens of millimetre-sized species journals including the most prestigious ones. His contri- back to life that are extracted from tons of sediments butions cover the fields of systematics, phylogeny, bio- through the hard and time-consuming collecting-sieving- chronology or palaeoecology mostly of the European picking process. He became Doctor in Zoology in 1971 and continent and the Swiss Alpine foreland basin, but several his seminal work was published in a regional Swiss journal articles and monographs also deal with faunas of the New a year later. His talents as scientific illustrator became World and Asia (see publication list below). But Museum work is also about conservation, in which he involved himself in keeping a high collection standard and in greatly enriching the collection inherited from his famous prede- L. Costeur (&) cessors Ru¨timeyer, Stehlin, Schaub and Hu¨rzeler among Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Augustinergasse 2, others. This enlargement is barely visible since tens of 4001 Basel, Switzerland thousands of teeth of rodents and insectivores take only a e-mail: [email protected] couple of compactor columns in the vast collection, the O. Maridet Á Z. Qiu Á Z. Qiu tons of sediments he brought to Basel being now washed Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates, away, probably by the Rhine River! Working in collections Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, also means that you meet colleagues from the whole world, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 643, Beijing 100044, China and this is the part Burkart always preferred. Most of the e-mail: [email protected] contributing authors of this volume met him in the ‘‘Bun- Z. Qiu ker’’ of the NMB (for those who do not know the expres- e-mail: [email protected] sion, it is a typical Swiss bomb shelter to protect scientific Z. Qiu goods) and developed projects with him while discussing e-mail: [email protected] biochronology or systematics. Besides research and 2 L. Costeur et al. collection work, Burkart created parts of the always-to-be- southwestern China, including Shanwang in Shandong seen permanent exhibition of the NMB on recent and fossil province, and Lufeng, Yuanmou and Chenggong in Yun- mammals. And he did put a lot of himself into the pro- nan province. These Chinese Neogene and Pleistocene boscidean part, as an admirer of these giants, probably a localities also attracted his attention because of their reaction to working constantly on a binocular microscope. abundant or well-preserved mammal remains. Burkart Burkart also helped along the successful exhibition on became fascinated with some taxa showing close affinities Chinese Dinosaurs presented in 1990, and became close with European Miocene counterparts, especially those from friend with several researchers of the Institute of Vertebrate the hominoid localities of Yunnan, and some relatives of Palaeontology and Palaeonthropology in Beijing, three of these taxa still living in the tropical or subtropical areas of whom he already knew having met them at the Interna- the Oriental Province. He firmly believes that quite a few tional Neogene Congress in 1979 in Athens. of the small mammals living in Yunnan, such as some One of us (Qiu Zhanxiang), then head of the Neogene genera of uropsilines, hylomyines and platacanthomyines, Group of the IVPP, was deeply struck by the richness of the are affiliated with European Miocene forms, and Europe European Plio-Pleistocene large mammal fossils in Steh- might have had similar ecological conditions during the lin’s collection when he visited the Naturhistorisches Miocene as in some current areas of Yunnan. Museum Basel in the framework of the exhibition in 1990. To investigate these relict forms, he began to explore the Burkart, being himself a micromammalogist but always forests in Wuliang Mt and Ailao Mt with Daniel Oppliger extremely kind to palaeontologists specializing in any other and his Chinese zoological and palaeontological colleagues animal group, decided to help him to realize his wish to in the spring of 2002. He joined Dr. Jiang Xuelong, a undertake a comparative study of Chinese and European zoologist from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese materials. Supported by the Swiss National Fund, Qiu Academy of Sciences, in the forests to collect specimens Zhanxiang had the opportunity to spend about 10 months and investigate the ecotope of these small mammals during in Basel between 1991 and 1995 to study the European five field seasons until 2007. He paid special attention to Plio-Pleistocene large mammal fossils, including canids, some monotypic genera, such as Neotetracus and Typhlo- machairodonts, tapirs, and pigs. These experiences turned mys, which may be closely allied to the Miocene European out to be of fundamental importance when work started on Lantanotherium and Neocometes, respectively. A manu- the Longdan fauna, one of the earliest Quaternary faunas, script publishing his investigations is ust came out in around 2.2–2.5 Ma, found in Gansu, China. It all ended up Vertebrate PalAsiatica (see references). Since the dentition with a monograph published in 2004. of these hedgehogs have been neither described nor figured From 1994 onwards, Burkart, accompanied by Clemens in detail so far, their careful character analysis is instructive Mo¨dden, Daniel Oppliger, and Friedrich Heller in separate and will be very useful for palaeontologists and neontolo- trips, began to be involved in surveys of the Tertiary gists. Another article on Neotetracus dealing with its continental basins in North-West China. During the field external appearance, biotope, behavior in captivity and seasons in 1994–2000 and together with their Chinese DNA comparisons with Hylomys, and Neohylomys will be colleagues, they travelled along the upper reaches of the published elsewhere. Huang (Yellow) River, especially in the Lanzhou and The work of Burkart during his career is not only Linxia Basins, and the Gansu Hexi Corridor in Gansu. The impressive due to the amount of fossil specimens he work in the Lanzhou Basin, conducted by joint teams studied from America, Asia and Europe (Burkart named composed of Swiss, American, and Chinese colleagues, about 60 taxa all of them being still valid today, see may be considered to be the highlight of the field activities below), but also due to the broad array of disciplines he has there. More than a hundred fossil sites were found, been working on. Indeed, besides being a worldwide including some producing micromammal remains screen- recognised specialist of rodent and insectivore systematics washed by Burkart. As a result, five successive reference (two of the most diversified orders of mammals), Burkart local faunas were established for the Xianshuihe Forma- also published reference papers about the stratigraphy and tion: the Nanpoping (late Early Oligocene), Xiagou (Late biochronology of Europe, especially about the Cenozoic Oligocene), Zhangjiaping (Early Miocene), Duitinggou Swiss fresh water molasse and also showed a constant (Early–Middle Miocene), and Quantougou (Middle Mio- interest in biogeography, palaeoecology and mammalian cene). Despite the publication of preliminary results, it evolutionary history in his publications. For all this, the should be noted that the micromammal fossils found from contribution of Burkart to the fields of palaeontology and the Lanzhou Basin are so numerous that a large number of geology is invaluable. them remain undescribed, waiting to be studied. Burkart officially retired in 2007 but keeps on working Also in 1994 Burkart, accompanied by one of us (Qiu in Basel and in China; his monograph on the insectivores of Zhuding), visited some fossil localities in eastern and the Middle Miocene of Sansan, France, published in the A tribute to Burkart Engesser 3 Schweizerische Pala¨ontologische Abhandlungen—for Eomyops; he reviews the evolutionary history of this genus which he served as chief editor from 1985 to 2010— around the Middle-Late Miocene transition. Wang Banyue together with his recent work on hedgehogs are the best and one of us (Qiu Zhangxian) then describe new muroid evidence of his still active involvement in the field of rodents from China and dedicate a species to Burkart.