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ZOOARCH  January 2010

ZOOARCH January 2010

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Subject:

Zygmunt Bocheñski1935-2009

From:

Umberto Albarella <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Umberto Albarella <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:26:01 +0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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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"

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