Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 101. (Budapest 2009)
Pálfy, J.: Review of invertebrate and vertebrate paleontological types in the collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum
Review ofpaleonotogical types in the HNHM 9 DISTRIBUTION OF TYPES BY AUTHORS AND YEAR OF DESCRIPTION Specimens became types through the descriptive works of paleontologists who were either connected with the museum through their careers, or whose collections were added to our holdings at some later time. The value of our collections, and that of the type collection in particular, is thus directly related to some outstanding persons. Naturally, their scientific interest determined what they worked on, thereby distributions by most other aspects analyzed in this paper (i.e. by taxonomic groups, geologic age, geographic and lithostratigraphic origin) are correlated to some extent to the significant persons who added types to our collections. Altogether 101 paleontologists are authors of our types, in 103 different combinations of authorship as individuals or teams. There are 20 authors who registered at least 12 new taxa each. (In the entire dataset analyzed here, the rounded mean number of taxa described by an author happens to be 12, whereas the median is 3.) Together, they are responsible for 83% of all taxa considered here. The contribution of these most prolific authors (in terms of number of new taxa erected) is shown in Fig. 2. The observed pattern in author productivity is discussed later. Obviously, the number of new taxa can be a misleading indicator of the true value of someone's scientific contribution, therefore a few comments are warranted here. The three most prolific authors indeed made seminal contributions to Hungarian paleontology. In his monographs of Oligocene molluscs, NOSZKY (1936, 1939, 1940) employed a somewhat narrow species concept, therefore subsequent taxonomic revisions of BÁLDI (1973, 1986) synonymized several of his subspecies or species. CSEPREGHY-MEZNERICS, a former head of the department, published a suite of monographs and shorter papers on Neogene molluscs from Hungary. MÜLLER, although never employed by the HNHM, donated to our department the Eocene and Miocene decapod crustacean material, including types of numerous taxa introduced in his monograph and a series of papers. SZÖTS is ranked fourth in our list but his type material is split between the GIH and HNHM. In fact the more valuable figured material of his monograph is mostly kept at the GIH, but the institute donated parts of the type series (which invariably lack designated holotypes) to the HNHM after 1956. Mostly Triassic radiolarian types of species described by KOZUR and coworkers represent the currently most dynamically growing part of the type collection. BÁLDI continued the monographic work on the rich Tertiary mollusc fauna, previously studied by NOSZKY and a few other workers, with impressive and lasting results. Much more controversial is the legacy of KOLOSVÁRY, who erected new species of corals, balanids and other groups on often dubiously preserved material in a series of papers. The validity of many of his taxa has been debated. Unfortunately, types of as many as 21 of his taxa can no longer be found in the collection. The Coquand Collection has a more complicated history than his collector, the eminent 19 1' 1 century French paleontologist H. COQUAND, hoped for and set out in his will. Purchased by a donation of A. SEMSEY for the GIH, a large part of the collection, including many types, were transferred to the HNHM to alleviate the losses of 1956 (BÁCSKAY 1994). HANTKEN is considered the founding father of Hungarian micropaleontology, hence his type material Annls hist.-nat. Mus. natn. hung. 101, 2009
