2013
Award Recipient: Dr. Gerald Mayr

By awarding the 2013 Maria Koepcke Prize, the FG “Ornithological Collections” honors an exceptionally active paleo-ornithologist who, by linking the morphology of fossil and extant birds, has uncovered significant insights into their evolutionary history.

After completing his studies at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, Dr. Gerald Mayr began studying birds from the Eocene of the Messel site as early as his 1997 dissertation at Humboldt University in Berlin. As curator of the ornithological collection at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Museum in Frankfurt, he has continued this work to the present day, resulting in numerous publications. Particularly noteworthy is the synthesis of his findings in his comprehensive work on Paleogene birds, which was published in 2009. Gerald Mayr has thus become one of the world’s leading specialists on birds of this era. In the course of his work, he has described many fossil bird species, including such well-known specimens as the 10th skeleton of Archaeopteryx and a gigantic pseudothenornith from the Miocene of Chile.

Another focus of his work was studies on the phylogeny of birds, particularly the phylogeny of swifts and swifts, parrots, hummingbirds, and flamingos, as well as the evolutionary development of the Passeriformes. In these studies, Gerald Mayr combined morphological characteristics of fossil and living birds and discussed his findings in light of molecular analyses. As a result, phylogenetic ornithological research achieved a methodological breadth rarely seen before, leading to an enormous increase in knowledge in this field within a short period of time. The awarding of the Maria Koepcke Prize is intended to honor, in particular, this integration of methods, which, through its scientific success, has also underscored the importance of research on museum collections.