Oscar Fraas
German anthropologist and paleontologist (1824-1897)
Oscar Friedrich von Fraas (17 January 1824 in Lorch (Württemberg) – 22 November 1897 in Stuttgart) was a German clergyman, paleontologist and geologist. Fraas was a physico-theologist and saw fossil evidence in the light of the "Great Flood" of the Bible. He was the father of geologist Eberhard Fraas (1862–1915).
Biography
Fraas was born in Lorch, the son of pastor Christoph Friedrich (1791–1861) and Ernestine née Neuffer. He studied theology at the University of Tübingen (ministry exam, 1845). He was also deeply interested in natural sciences, and while a student at Tübingen was influenced by geologist Friedrich August von Quenstedt. In 1847 he travelled to Paris, where he attended lectures given by Alcide d'Orbigny and Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont. From 1850 to 1854, he served as a pastor in Laufen an der Eyach, and in the meantime obtained a doctorate from the University of Würzburg (1851) with a study of the Swabian Jura. In 1854 he was named curator of the department of mineralogy and paleontology at the Royal Württemberg museum of natural history in Stuttgart, where he greatly added to its collections of Swabian fossil batrachians, reptiles and mammals. He excavated fossils at Schussen spring in Upper Swabia and Bear Cave in Hohlenstein where he noted human remains from the Ice Age.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oscar Fraas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.