The vertebrates in the paleontological collection Georg Gasser (1857–1931)

The Museum of Nature South Tyrol houses about 3500 fossils belonging to the early 20th century private collection of Georg Gasser. Vertebrates make up only 10% of this collection but could potentially have acted as an attractor for Gasser’s museum, as vertebrate fossils are often perceived by the non-professional public as more “spectacular” than invertebrates. However, big, complete or otherwise impressive specimens are rare in the collection, a fact that probably reflects the limits – both economical and logistic – that Gasser experienced in his collecting effort. Fish and mammal remains are the most represented, reptiles forming a minority of the specimens in the collection. The collection is clearly biased towards younger periods of Earth history, with about 68 % of the specimens belonging to the Cenozoic, 15 % to the Mesozoic and only 4 % to the Paleozoic. About 13 % are of indeterminate age. The bulk of the collection is from localities within countries that around 1900 belonged to the German speaking world. Some celebrated Fossil-Lagerstätten are represented, but also many less well-known sites.