Hermann von Meyer

Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer, known as Hermann von Meyer, was a German paleontologist born September 3, 1801, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, who died April 2, 1869, and who established himself as a leading figure in nineteenth century fossil research, issuing Palaeologica in 1832 and going on to publish numerous memoirs on fossil organisms, including a systematic classification of fossil reptiles into four groups by limb structure that proved influential in early paleontological taxonomy. He described and named the prosauropod dinosaur Plateosaurus engelhardti, named the earliest known bird Archaeopteryx lithographica in 1861, and identified important pterosaurs including Rhamphorhynchus, publishing his extensively illustrated Zur Fauna der Vorwelt on Carboniferous amphibians, Permian reptiles and Triassic fauna between 1845 and 1860 and co-founding the journal Palaeontographica in 1851. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1860 and received the Wollaston Medal in 1858.