Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 94. (Budapest 2002)

Matskási, I.: Bicentenary of the Hungarian Natural History Museum

ists' donations, however, also had a great share in enrichment. As a result, mainly the invertebrate material increased by several thousand items. This was the period when the native Eocene molluscs and gastropods of Gánt and the special fish fauna (with a specimen with enteric contents in that number) of 'Kiscelli Sea' (Eger and Óbuda) appeared in our museum. A number of spectacular items, mainly big vertebrates, enriched the collection, too. In terms of evolution a kind of primitive elephant deserves special mention here: Prodeinothehum hungaricum, the remains of a Deinotherium and a Mastodon. However, the sandstone slabs of Ipolytarnóc (with one in the size of a smaller room among them) showing the well-preserved footprints of 11 kinds of Miocene vertebrates (elephantoids, rhino, predators, cervidae, birds, etc.). The 70 cm thick and 1.5 m long trunk of a primeval pine (with uniquely intact annual rings) also established itself at our Department. This ensemble of fossils involves an outstanding value of the collection. World War II and the fire of 1956 could merely disrupt but not impair the dynamism of growth. The War caused a 20%, the fire of 1956 about an 80% loss (of the 140,000 inventory items 110,000 perished in fire!). Work was rapidly and intensely resumed after both disasters, and it took only a few years' hard work to regenerate, with irrecoverable losses excluded, the collection. Alongside with materials mainly serving the needs of taxonomic and stratigraphic analyses, there appeared several outstanding finds in the collection. It is worthwhile highlighting here the skeleton of the Deinotherium of Pannonhalma, the Mastodon skull and tusk from Balatonszentgyörgy, and more than 150 Jurassic dinosaurs' (Komlosaurus) footprints hard coal mining surfaced at Pécs. Currently, there are 90,000 inventory items kept at the Department. The research of the biology and geological history of the Carpathian-Pannonian Region involves the scientific work of the Department. These research activities provide data for understanding the history of the biosphere and finding out more about the historical biology of the Hungarian soil. Of the various classes of fossil we have, protozoans (Foraminifera), molluscs (bivalves, gastropods, cuttlefish), tentaculates (mantle-breathing bivalves, moss corals), and vertebrates (fish, birds, mammals) are significant in terms of number and value. Although we have fossils coming from the last half a billion years of the Earth's history, the collection focuses on the Mesozoic and Kainozoic periods. Our research work primarily revolves around the palaeontological, stratigraphie, and palaeogeographic analyses of Mesozoic materials, in addition to the ongoing scientific processing of significant Miocene gastropod and Pleistocene vertebrate ones.