Johannes Weigelt

Theodor Otto Gustav Johannes Weigelt was a German paleontological, geologist. After studying at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, he habilitated in December 1918 and initially worked as a collections assistant at Halle before he began an academic career at the same university. In 1924, he was commissioned to study the geology of seismic events along the Texas Gulf Coast and discovered that salt domes were important in oil drilling. Weigelt's study of fossil specimens on the gulf coast, led him to become the first proponent of taphonomy, the study of how organisms decay and eventually become fossilised. In 1926, he became a lecturer at University of Greifswald. A year later he published "Recent Vertebrate Corpses and Their Palaeobiological Significance" that cemented his reputation as the founder of biostratinomy the process that occurs after an organism dies but before its final burial. The work led to a promotion as full professor. In 1929, he moved back to Halle to take the position of professor of geology, succeeding his former scientific mentor Johannes Walther. In Halle, he made an extensive study of vertebrate fossils in the Kupferschiefer area and collected many thousands of specimens. In 1933, he became a Nazi. In 1934, he founded the Museum for Earth Science of Central Germany at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. After the war, he was denazified, fined and was no longer allowed to work.

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