MAYER-EYMAR, KARL

(b. Marseilles, France, 29 June 1826; d. Zurich, Switzerland, 25 February 1907)

paleontology, stratigraphy.

The son of a Swiss merchant, Mayer-Eymar received his early schooling in Rennes and St. Gall. He entered the University of Zurich in 1846, first studying medicine and then natural history and geology. After graduating, he worked in Paris from 1851 to 1854, principally at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle under d’Orbigny. In 1858 he was appointed assistant in the geology institute of the Zurich Polytechnische Hochsehule. Shortly afterward, he became a Privatdozent and curator of the collections, and in 1875 he was named professor. He held these latter posts until his death and never married. His contemporaries described Mayer-Eymar as an original and sometimes picturesque character. Around 1865 he added the anagram Eymar to his patronymic to avert confusion with other persons of that name; thenceforth he wrote his name Mayer-Eymar.

Mayer-Eymar’s chief field of interest was the biostratigraphy and paleontology of mollusks, mainly of the Tertiary and, to a lesser extent, of the Jurassic and the Cretaceous. A passionate and successful collector from his school days on, he investigated in particular the Tertiary terranes of many western European and Mediterranean countries and brought extensive collections back to Zurich. He published voluminous lists and descriptions of these materials and of others sent to him from abroad. Some of his accounts included new species and genera, but most of them were without illustrations. This omission lessened the usefulness of many of his publications.

Mayer-Eymar’s stratigraphical works were of great importance and have been of some influence until the present day. In 1858 appeared his first major publication on the subdivision of the Tertiary, which he divided into stages according to lithological and faunal criteria named after typical localities in the Tertiary basins of western Europe. He introduced many new names for these stages, a number of which were never adopted or were in use for only a short time; others, however, are still employed, although with somewhat modified definitions (for instance, Bartonian, Tongrian, Aquitanian, Helvetian, Tortonian, Plaisancian). He published similar subdivisions on the Jurassic and Cretaceous. For the publication of his stratigraphic researches he employed mainly autographed synoptic tables, which he frequently republished in improved form.

His profound paleontological knowledge frequently enabled Mayer-Eymar to make definitive decisions concerning stratigraphical problems. In 1876, he clarified the much discussed question of whether the glaciers of the southern Alps were contemporaneous with the Pliocene sea in northern Italy. He demonstrated that the glacial deposits contained layers with Quaternary mollusks and therefore had to be more recent than the late Pliocene marine sediments of the Astian.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Mayer-Eymar’s writings include “Versuch einer neuen Klassifikation der Tertiär-Gebilde Europas,” in Verhandlungen der Schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft (Trogcn) (1858), 165–199; “Catatogue systématique et descriptif des mollusques tertiaires, qui so trouvent au Musée fédéral de Zurich,” in Vierteljahrsschrift der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich, 11 (1866), 301–337; 12 (1867), 241–303; 13 (1868), 21–105, 163–200; 15 (1870), 31–82; “Systemaiisches Verzeichnis der Versteinerungen des Helvetian der Schweiz und Schwabens,” in Beiträge zur geologischen Karte der Schweiz, 11 (1872), 475–511; “La vérité sur la mer glaciale au pied des Alpes,” in Bulletin de la Soeiété géotogique de France, 3rd ser., 4 (1876), 199–222; the synoptic tables, published in Zurich in 1900: Classification et terminotogie des terrains tertiaires d’Europe, Classification et terminotogie des terrains crétaciques d’Europe, and Classification et terminotogie des terrains jurassiques d’Europe, and many articles on fossil mollusks and stratigraphic problems in Journal de conchyliotogie, 5–49 (1856–1902), and in Vierteljahrsschrift der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zurich, 6–49 (1861–1904).

II. Secondary Literature. See G. F. Dollfus, “Nécrotogic Ch. Mayer-Eymar,” in Journal de conchyliologie, 56 (1908), 145–162; A. Heim and L. Rollier, “Dr. Karl Mayer-Eymar 1826–1907,” in Verhandlungen der Schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft Vers. (Fribourg), 90 (1908), xl-xlix, with complete bibliography; and F. Sacco, “Carlo Mayer-Eymar. Cenni biografici,” in Bollettino della Societá geologica italiana, 26 (1907), 585–602, with a 127–title bibliography.

Heinz Tobien