Gerhard Heilmann

Gerhard Heilmann, also Heilman, ( born June 25, 1859 in Skaelskoer, † March 26, 1946 ) was a Danish artist and amateur ornithologist and paleontologist. He is best known as the author of a book on the origin of birds.

Heilmann was the son of a pharmacist, attended the Polytechnic Institute in Roskilde and then began to become a painter to study medicine, but he dropped out in 1883. From 1890 he worked in the Copenhagen porcelain factory and from 1902 as a freelance artist and illustrator of books. Since he was amateur ornithologist, he illustrated in particular books on natural history and birds. He was also involved in the design of Danish banknotes.

Because of the fact that at that time clavicles in theropods (such as Compsognathus, which was at that time liked to watch related parties as the precursors of birds) were not known (as opposed to the fork leg of the birds ), he spoke out against a lineage of birds of this dinosaur group. He suspected their origin instead at the Thecodontia. However, in 1936 the fork legs and were later found in many other in a theropod ( Segisaurus ). Older finds even before appearance of Heilmann's articles have been misinterpreted and identified later as leg. Heilmann's views but were accepted until the 1960s and 1970s.

1913 to 1916, he published a series of papers in the Journal of the Danish Ornithological Association ( Dansk Ornitologisk Forenings Tidskrift ) about the origin of birds, illustrated by himself. While he was little noticed in Denmark or even fighting, he found in Anglo-Saxon countries, more attention - In 1926 an English edition out ( The Origin of Birds, London, Witherby ).

Scansioriopteryx healing manni, a bird -like dinosaur that was named after him in 2002.