Ernst_Friedrich_Schlotheim

Ernst Friedrich Schlotheim, BARON VON (1764-1832), German palaeontologist, was born in Grafschaft Schwarzburg on the 2nd of April 1764. He was Privy Councillor and President of the Chamber at the court of Gotha. Becoming interested in geology he gathered together a very extensive collection of fossils. In 1804 he published descriptions and illustrations of remarkable remains of (Carboniferous) plants, Ein Beitrag zur Flora der Vorwelt. His more important work was entitled Die Petrefactenkunde (1820). In this he incorporated the plates used in his previous memoir and supplemented it by a folio atlas (1822), in which he illustrated his collection "of petrified and fossil remains of the animal and vegetable kingdom of a former world." For the first time in Germany the fossils were named according to the binomial system. The specimens are preserved in the Berlin Museum. He died at Gotha on the 28th of March 1832.