Conference Agenda

Under the framework of the European AlpArray project, a large number of European institutions have started a joint effort to better understand past and present tectonic processes in the Alps. Part of this framework is the German multi- and interdisciplinary 4DMB (Mountainbuilding in 4D) program which integrates research experts in geophysics, tectonics, petrology, geochronology, as well as basin and surface studies. A key effort was the emplacement of the AlpArray Seismic Network, comprising over 700 seismometers in the Alps and providing thus unprecedented array aperture and station density, both on land and sea. This is complemented by several local, even denser seismic experiments such as CIFALPS, Swath D or EASI. This huge collection of data allows us to study the seismicity and the deep Alpine structures at high resolution, and offers a unique opportunity to test concepts on mountainbuilding processes and develop new hypothesis.

In this presentation, a brief overview of published and preliminary results obtained in the 4DMB and AlpArray frameworks will be provided. The focus lies on results based on the seismic network data, including tomographic imaging, receiver functions and shear-wave splitting. These will be put in context to open questions on the collision history of the European and Adriatic plates such as the fate of the subducting slabs, the mantle flow pattern, the structure of the Moho and the related question of slab polarity reversal, or the reorganizations in the crust as expected from Adriatic indentation or the opening of the Pannonian basin.

Nicolaas C. de Fremery (1770-1844), whose portrait can be seen in the portrait gallery in the Senate Hall of Utrecht University, was the first Utrecht professor who published a paper on a fossil find. It appeared in 1831 and described a partial skull with the left horn core of an aurochs (Bos primigenius). The find stirred a discussion about whether this fossil belonged to an animal that lived before or after the biblical flood. The solution came from a simple analysis of the locality: stratigraphy avant la lettre. De Fremery published a total of three papers on fossils and remained active until 1851.

The rest of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth can be ignored, but things changed with the appointment in 1948 of professor G.H.R. von Koenigswald (1902-1982) on the chair of stratigraphy/paleontology. Von Koenigswald was already famous for his discoveries in the 1930’s of Pithecantropus skulls on Java in the footsteps of Eugène Dubois, and of the first Gigantopithecus material in China. After he moved from Utrecht to Frankfurt in 1968, he left behind a flourishing vertebrate paleontology department with four full-time scientists, a preparator, an draftsman and many students and PhD students.

Even though a suite of budget cuts, reorganizations and removals severely diminished the staff and the infrastructure from the 1980’s onward, a reduced number of dedicated scientists continued providing education and doing research, mostly on Cenozoic small mammals. In 2005, and through the intervention of the Hans de Bruijn Foundation, an extraordinariate chair in Vertebrate Paleontology was established that was subsequently transformed into an ordinariate that remains until today. Acting chair is professor Anne Schulp who was appointed in 2019. The fields now covered vary from Triassic fishes to Cretaceous dinosaurs, Cenozoic mammals and the Pleistocene mammoth fauna.

The importance of the Utrecht VP group in the long run can best be measured by its scientific human ‘offspring’. Many paleontologists who started their career in Utrecht as a student have become renowned specialists in such fields as fossil whales and the early evolution of cetaceans, paleoanthropology, island evolution, or general vertebrate paleontology.