38e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d'histoire naturelle
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
38e réunion annuelle des
collaborateurs scientifiques du
Musée national d’histoire naturelle
samedi 19 mars 2022
Centre Culturel de Rencontre
Abbaye de Neumünster
Luxembourg-Grund38e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
238e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Programme
13 h 45 Ouverture du colloque aux participants inscrits
Einlassung der eingeschriebenen Teilnehmer
14 h 00 Allocution de bienvenue
Begrüßungswort
Alain Faber
Directeur du Musée national d’histoire naturelle
Director of the National Museum of Natural History
Colloque sur le patrimoine naturel, la biodiversité et l’évolution
Colloquium on Natural Heritage, Biodiversity & Evolution
1ère session de présentation
1st session of talks
modéré par / presented by
Odile Weber, section de botanique / botany department
14 h 20 Geoheritage in the Minett UNESCO Biosphere (Southern
Luxembourg): Inventory, Evaluation, and Conservation Aspects of
Representative Geosites
Robert Weis
14 h 40 Arable plants – Can they still be saved?
Simone Schneider
15 h 00 Quantifying the road-effect zone for a critically endangered
primate
Balint Andrasi
15 h 20 COMPASS III (Comet Observation & Minor Planet Astrometric Sky
Survey)
Matt Dawson
15 h 40
Contributing one’s naturalist data to the information system on
natural heritage
Tania Walisch, Claude Pepin, Paul Braun
16 h 00 Collection & Research News
16 h 10 Pause café / Coffee Break
338e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
2e session de présentation
2nd session of talks
modéré par / presented by
Odile Weber, section de botanique / botany department
17 h 00: The Last Triassic giant from the Rhaetian of Bonenburg (North
Rhine-Westphalia)
Laurent Garbay
17 h 20: Providing beds and breakfast for bats and birds
Nathalie Grotz
17 h 40 Revisions of the moss herbaria in the Herbar Lux
Florian Hans
18 h 00: Gasperich site - between hobbyist fossil hunting and science
Kamil Bernacki
18 h 20 Conclusion
18 h 30 Dîner / Dinner
438e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Geoheritage in the Minett UNESCO Biosphere (Southern
Luxembourg): Inventory, Evaluation, and Conservation Aspects of
Representative Geosites
Robert Weis
National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg, Palaeontology Department; rweis@mnhn.lu
The southwestern part of Luxembourg, known as Minett in the local language use, exposes an exceptionally
high diversity of marine near-shore sediment rocks from the Early to Middle Jurassic, owing to its proximal
position at the north-eastern margins of the Paris Basin. The iconic Minette ironstone formation is known
as the worldwide largest oolitic ironstone deposit from the last 500 my and the abandoned open cast mines
are nowadays protected sites with a high biodiversity, intrinsically linked to geodiversity. The schistes
bitumineux unit, a lateral equivalent of the well-known Posidonienschiefer of the Holzmaden region (South
Germany), is frequently studied for its exceptionally preserved fossils of marine vertebrates, cephalopods,
and insect remains, deserving its status as a Fossil-Lagerstätte of international relevance. Of regional
importance are the Rumelange limestones, with coral patch-reef paleo-environments. The
geomorphological main feature of the region is the Cuesta of the Middle Jurassic (‘Dogger-Schichtstufe’),
with several outliers (‘Zeugenberge’) that represent widely visible landmarks in the landscape. In this paper,
16 geosites, representative of the geological, palaeontological, geomorphological, and hydrogeological
heritage in the Minett UNESCO biosphere, are presented and evaluated according to scientific, educational,
and geotouristic criteria.
538e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Arable plants – Can they still be saved?
Simone Schneider
National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg, Ecology Department; simone.schneider@mnhn.lu
Naturschutzsyndikat SICONA; simone.schneider@sicona.lu
The arable vegetation of calcareous soils (Caucalidion) has been selected “Plant community of the year
2022” (Bergmeier et al. 2021) to raise public awareness of one of the most endangered plant communities
in our cultural landscape and honor the farming work of many generations. Arable vegetation emerged and
flourished with traditional agriculture; but with intensification in recent decades, arable plant diversity has
been dwindling in Luxembourg as in other countries. Agroecosystems have been degraded by the
widespread use of agrochemicals such as artificial nitrogen fertilizers and herbicides, by denser seeding,
seed cleaning, immediate plowing after grain harvest and changes in crop rotation with loss of fallow.
However, it has also been possible to retain refugia for arable plants, e.g. through the creation of pesticide-
free management of field margins and the setting-up of extensively managed fields. The decline of the
highly endangered arable flora must be counteracted as quickly as possible within the framework of national
and EU support programs for agriculture. All in all, extensively managed cropland delivers a wide range of
ecosystem services and the conservation of arable plant communities is not limited to preventing a floristic
diminishing but also counteracts the alarming decline particularly of insects and farmland birds.
The talk provides an overview of protective measures for endangered arable plants deemed decisive and
urgent at the local and national level. The remaining hotspots of arable plants in the southwest of
Luxembourg as a facilitator for targeted conservation efforts are emphasized, examples of the systematic
survey and mapping effort of the last decade presented and the importance of comparative recordings over
long time periods put forward. Finally - connecting on the conservation concept for arable plants in
Luxembourg - the results of a recent poll analyzing the acceptance of contractual nature conservation
schemes for arable lands are revisited.
Bergmeier, E., Meyer, S., Pape, F., Dierschke, H., Härdtle, W., Heinken, T., Hölzel, N., Remy, D., Schwabe,
A., Tischew, S. & Schneider, S., 2021. Ackerwildkraut-Vegetation der Kalkäcker (Caucalidion):
Pflanzengesellschaft des Jahres 2022. – Tuexenia 41: 299–350.
638e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Quantifying the road-effect zone for a critically endangered
primate
Balint Andrasi
National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg, Zoology Department; balint.andrasi@mnhn.lu
Global investment into infrastructure is estimated to grow by 60% by 2050, which means a 33 trillion USD
investment into the building of 25 million km of new paved roads. Ninety percent of this growth will take
place in developing countries, which hosts some of the greatest biodiversity on Earth, while also having
some of the poorest governances. Africa has much to benefit from such investments since it holds areas
where people could greatly benefit from roads, railways and other infrastructure. At the same time, many
of those areas overlap with locations of high conservation value. Planned or projects under construction
could have a number of negative impacts on the environment. This presentation will review some of the
environmental impacts of infrastructure development with special focus on roads and how they contribute
to the decline of biological diversity. Furthermore, the use of road-effect zones as impact mitigation tools
will also be discussed through the example of the critically endangered western chimpanzee.
738e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
LUCID – Luxembourg Comet Identification and Discovery
Matt Dawson
mgedawson@gmail.com
Using a home-built telescope based in Luxembourg, I have been observing and measuring the positions of
potentially dangerous Near Earth Asteroids since 1997 (in collaboration with Eric Buttini - MNHN Geo- &
Astrophysics department). So far we have submitted 92,162 astrometric positions to the Minor Planet
Center which are regularly used by NASA, JPL and other institutions to calculate the orbits of these
fascinating objects. Due to increasing light pollution we have opened a new observatory at a very dark-sky
site in Calabria, Italy Osservatorio della Luna Casta. More recently our focus has been on searching for
new comets near the Sun, and reporting changes in the morphology of known Comets. I will briefly describe
how and why we do this work, how the field has changed in the last 25 years, and why professional
observatories rely on the collaboration of amateur observers like us, even in this age of giant survey
telescopes. In the course of this work we have discovered 12 new asteroids which have we named after
prominent Luxembourgers.
838e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Contributing one’s naturalist data to the information system on natural
heritage
Tania Walisch, Claude Pepin, Paul Braun
National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg, SIDPNat
Over the years, the National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg has set up an information system
on bio- and geodiversity with the aim to collate, curate, conserve and publish all species observation data
from Luxembourg as well as specimen data from the Museum's collections. The information system is
operated by the natural heritage information service (SIDPNAT) who also improves data quality, ensures
data security and provides and develops tools for encoding, managing and publishing data. Moreover,
SIDPNAT deals with the integration of data from various national data providers and international platforms
and applications (e.g. GBIF, iNaturalist, ornitho.lu) and publishes them on a national biodiversity portal
mdata.mnhn.lu as well as on gbif.org under open data licenses wherever possible.
To date, this information system contains more than 4 million observation data for nearly 20.000 species of
plants, animals and fungi, 10.000 occurrences of biotopes and data of more than 100.000 specimens of
the botanical, paleontological, mineralogical and zoological collections. The data has been contributed by
scientific staff and scientific collaborators of the Museum, other public administrations, ministries, NGOs,
public research centers, consultancies, natural parks and biological stations, as well as through citizen
science.
On the territory of Luxembourg, bird observations represent the largest share of biodiversity data (57%)
followed by plants (27%). Invertebrates make up 14% and fungi only 0.6% of data even though they
comprise a much larger number of species than plants or vertebrates. We recommend to develop expertise,
targeted inventories and if possible societal initiatives (e.g. citizen science) for neglected organism groups.
In 2022, SIDPNAT will upgrade its online tool data.mnhn.lu for data entry, reporting and validation by expert
naturalists and nature professionals and launch the smartphone app iRecord for Luxembourg.
938e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
The Last Triassic giant from the Rhaetian of Bonenburg (North
Rhine-Westphalia)
Laurent Garbay
garblaur@gmail.com
Stereospondyli are a common member during the Late Triassic worldwide, but suffered nearly extinction at
the Triassic-Jurassic boundary with only some members surviving in Asia and Australia. It is commonly
accepted that European, American and African stereospondyls went extinct at the end of the Norian,
however the here studied femur comes from Rhaetian and those younger sediments. It was recovered from
a marine bonebed in Bonenburg (Germany) and is one of only few postcranial fossils which cannot be
assigned to a marine reptile. However the taxonomical assignement to Stereospondyli is also problematic
as the postcranial skeleton of Stereospondyli is understudied as posteranial elements and articulated
skeletons are rare.
Aggrevated by the similar long bone morphology between different stereospondyls another non-
morphological character was needed to assign the bone without any doubt to a taxon. By histological
comparison with Metoposaurus krasiejowensis, Cyclotosaurus intermedius and Mastodonsaurus giganteus
the femur belongs certainly to the Capitopsauria, the group, which is represented by up to 14 m long
speciman.
This discovery not only extends the geological range of the Stereospondyli till the end of the Triassic, it also
implies a rather slowly extinction and not a sudden extinction at the end of the Norian, triggerd by one event,
as assumed before.
1038e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
LIFE Bats & Birds - Providing beds and breakfast for bats and
birds
Nathalie Grotz
natur&ëmwelt Fondation Hëllef fir d’Natur ; n.grotz@naturemwelt.lu
The target species of the LIFE Bats & Birds project face diverse difficulties in the modern landscape. The
major obstacles can be summarised in a lack of food and appropriate habitat. The two bats species (greater
horseshoe bat and Geoffroy’s bat) as well as the four birds species (great grey shrike, red-backed shrike,
little owl and wryneck) on which the project focusses, all need a diverse open landscape with a rich supply
of food, mainly composed of insects.
In order to counteract the decline of these species, several measures are implemented in the course of the
Life Bats & Birds project. These include planting of woody plants, resumption of use and extensification of
the use of arable land and grassland. Planting of (fruit) trees, linear hedges and extensive field copses as
well as deadwood and stone piles help to improve the habitat situation and allow a connection between
different landscape elements and create corridors. Existing structures often need to be taken care of in
order to maintain them as long as possible. Extensive agriculture provides ideal conditions for many insects
by the abdication of pesticides an intense fertilisation. Grazed meadows provide additional habitats for
insects, wherefore they are be supported by the construction of fences. The roosting possibilities of bats
will be improved by adapting buildings to their needs. In order to secure the implementation in the long
term, land is to be purchased.
To be able to track the success of the measures, they are monitored with the help of insect biomass, plant
biodiversity and the occurrence of the target species. Raising the awareness for the species and the difficult
condition in which they are is another important focus of the project.
1138e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Revisions of the moss herbaria in the Herbar Lux
Florian Hans
florian_hans@hotmail.de
From 2018 to 2021, the moss herbaria of the Luxembourgish botanists Jean Feltgen (1833 - 1904), Léon
Lefort (1919 - 1975), Leopold Reichling (1921 - 2009) and the Belgian botanist Frédéric Gravet (1827-1907)
in the Herbar Lux were systematically examined, described and recorded in a database. Gravet's
"Bryotheca Belgica" turned out to be a particular treasure. The total of 2,129 specimens examined contain
numerous surprises: New finds for Belgium and Luxembourg; long-lost specimens of largely unknown
German moss colleagues of the above-mentioned collectors as well as specimens of species that are now
extinct in many places.
1238e réunion annuelle des collaborateurs scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle 2022
38th Meeting of the Scientific collaborators of the National Museum of Natural History 2022
Gasperich site - between hobbyist fossil hunting and science
Kamil Bernacki
kamil_bernacki@yahoo.com
Cloche d’Or district is the area of intense urban developments in recent years. The construction,
landscaping and irrigation works are systematically exposing new fossiliferous outcrops.
My personal experience is one of an amateur fossil hunter. Before I started the Gasperich site exploration,
my understanding of palaeontology was mostly theoretical and the one of geology very elementary. The
process of discovering the Gasperich site allowed opening a small window into the new world.
My first finds in Cloche d’Or area date to late 2020, time of Covid-19 restrictions. With time, I collected over
4000 mostly fragmentary remains of Late Sinemurian and Early Pliensbachian invertebrates,
simultaneously getting in contact with the Natural History Museum (A. Di Cencio, B. Thuy, R. Weis). The
first joint visit on site resulted in discovery of fragmented ribs of an ichthyosaur. Further regular supervision
and organised excavation added more material, including a vertebra, jawbone fragments and finally the
section of snout with teeth.
Those finds attracted more attention to the site. Dedicated paper will be published soon (V. Fischer et al.)
and works on other finds are ongoing - including the Gasperich ammonite stratigraphy project which I have
pleasure to coordinate (with Ch. Meister, A. Di Cencio, V. Rebizant et al.). The extended collaboration
resulted also in exchange of experiences and implication of other fossil hunters, including Valéry Rebizant,
who collected high quality specimens from Gasperich already in 2015, and Anjin Thill, whose specimens
served to establish the first stratigraphic conclusions.
Until now, we identified a series of horizons from the Obtusum zone (Obtusum and Stellare sub-zones) and
the Ibex zone (Valdani and Luridum sub-zones). This supports hypothesis that the ichthyosaur layer
belongs to Valdani sub-zone, directly below Acanthopleuroceras alisiense horizon.
13You can also read
