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Dear Zooarchers, Tommy Tyrberg has written an obituary to remember our esteemed colleague Zygmunt Bocheński. I am pleased to enclose it below. With best wishes, Umberto Zygmunt Bocheński in memoriam. Professor Zygmunt Bocheński died on November 28 in Krakow, from a progressive neurological disease that had afflicted him since childhood. Zygmunt Bocheński was born on July 25, 1935 in Zakopane. His parents were both well-known art historians, but while Zygmunt did pursue a scholarly career, his interests were in the field of natural history, and in particular birds. At first he worked in field ornithology, particularly the breeding biology of birds. However as his disability made fieldwork ever more difficult, his focus of research gradually shifted to avian palaeontology, and it was in this field that he was to make the most important contribution. His entire career was spent in Krakow, where he received his MSc (in 1957) and PhD (in 1961) at the Jagiellonian University. He worked at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences from 1959 until his retirement in 2006, from 1983 as a professor. He created the Institutes’ comparative collection of bird bones, which is now one of the larger in Europe, and he was for many years editor of the Institutes’ journal Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, which he raised to a journal with international standing. Zygmunt’s main field of research was the Pleistocene and Holocene avifaunas of Poland. He summarized the results of this research twice, 1974 in a book "Ptaki młodszego czwartorzędu Polski" (Birds of the late Quaternary of Poland) and 1993 in a long paper “Catalogue of fossil and subfossil birds of Poland” in Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia. Despite their age, both are still indispensable references. However he also worked and published on Tertiary Polish birds, and undertook the determination and publication of Pleistocene and Holocene avifaunas from several other European countries and the Middle East. He even published on subfossil birds from Svalbard and Antarctica (part of a strong Polish tradition of Arctic research). One area of research that has perhaps not received as much interest as it deserves is his studies of the Last Interglacial and Early Holocene avifaunas of the Egyptian Sahara, from Bir Tarfawi and Nabta Playa, respectively. While the latter consists mostly of palearctic migrants, with a few afrotropical forms, the last interglacial birds from Bir Tarfawi is a full-blown afrotropical savannah fauna with an admixture of northern subdesert taxa, suggesting that there was little, if any, extreme desert in Sahara at that time. His last published paper (2008) described a new species of early hummingbird, Eurotrochilus noniewiczi, from the Early Oligocene of the Polish Carpathians. All this scientific work was carried under progressively more difficult conditions due to his motoric disability. For the last several years he was reduced to working at home, and to writing his papers on a computer with a single finger. Almost up to his death he was working on a new book “History of Polish Birds” which he unfortunately never had time to finish. It is to be hoped that it can be finished by his son Zbigniew who has followed in his fathers’ footsteps as an avian palaeontologist. Selected Publications: Bocheński, Z. 1968. Nesting of the European members of the genus Turdus Linnaeus 1758 (Aves). Acta zoologica cracoviensia, 13(16): 349-440. Bocheński, Z. 1974. Ptaki młodszego czwartorzędu Polski [Birds of the late Quaternary of Poland]. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa-Kraków. Bocheński, Z. & Oleś, T. 1977. Ptaki Ojcowskiego Parku Narodowego [Birds of Ojcow National Park]. Acta zoologica cracoviensia, 22(8): 319-372. Bocheński, Z. 1985. Nesting of the Sylvia Warblers. Acta zoologica cracoviensia, 29(12): 241-328 Bocheński, Z. 1993. Bird fauna from Bir Tarfawi. In: Wendorf, F et al.: Egypt during the last Interglacial. The Middle Palaeolithic of Bir Tarfawi and Bir Sahara East, pp. 159-185, Plenum Press, New York & London. Bocheński, Z. 1993. Catalogue of fossil and subfossil birds of Poland. Acta zoologica cracoviensia, 36(2): 329-460. Bocheński, Z. 1996. Tertiary Avian Localities of Poland. In: Mlíkovský, J. (ed.). Tertiary Avian Localities of Europe. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Geologica Vol 39(:3-4):693-697. Bocheński, Z. & Tomek, T. 2001. Holocene Bird Remains from Nabta. In: Wendorf, F. et al. Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara. Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa, pp. 636-647, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York. Bocheński, Z. 2002. Bird remains from Oblazowa - zoogeographical and evolutionary remarks. Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia 45(Special Issue): 239-252. Bocheński, Z. & Kuśnierczyk, P. 2003. Nesting of Acrocephalus warblers. Acta zoologica cracoviensia, 46(2): 97-195. Bocheński, Z. & Bocheński, Z. M. 2008. An Old World hummingbird from the Oligocene: a new fossil from Polish Carpathians. Journal of Ornithology, 149: 211-216. -- Umberto Albarella Department of Archaeology University of Sheffield Northgate House West Street Sheffield S1 4ET United Kingdom Telephone: (+) 44 (0) 114 22 22 943 Fax: (+) 44 (0) 114 27 22 563 http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/albarella.html For Archaeologists for Global Justice (AGJ) see: http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/global-justice.html "only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught we will realise we cannot eat money"