GEOL. C ROAT. 50/2 1/47 - 149 1 1 ZAGREB 1997 Morphological Variability as a Basis for Palaeontological Classification Iakov RADOVCIC On the occasion of the eighti eth birthday of Profes­ sor Milan Herak, it is certai nl y our responsibility and pleasure to trace the many articles and other works that highli ght the professor 's scientific contribution to Croa­ tian geology or palaeontology. Given that it is exactly fifty years aftcr the publication of one of Professor Her­ ak's palaeontological works, this is a relatively positive chronological distance from which it is possible to eva­ luate his contribution to our field. Tn his exceptionally prolific professional li fe, Pro­ fessor Herak spent almost a decade, 1943- 1952, as a curator in the Geological and Palaeontological Museum in Zagreb. Here, he was concerned with research into the rich osteological collection of cave bear remains (Urslfs spelaclfs) that the museum possessed, and this work culminated in the publication of a fairly large sci­ entific work, in 1947, entitled "Starost i sistematske znacajke spiljskog mcdvjeda Hrvatske"' (The Age and Systematic Characteristics of Cave Bear of Croatia). There arc many reasons this is a pioneering work in the history of Croatian vertebrate palaeontology, following the sign ifi cant offerings of Herak's predecessor in the museurn - Professor Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger. At this time new theoretical hypotheses and new syn­ theses of evol utionary theories were applied globally to the past and present world resulting in greater under­ standing of evolutionary mechanism of biological cha­ nge. Herak's 1947 paper is a good example of how , even in our lime it is necessary to understand the theo­ retical foundations of various methodical and palaeon­ tological classifications, determinations, and systemic organizations, in order to understand the various mor­ phological entities, throughout geological history which rcpresent once living organisms. Herak was concerned wi th the morphological vari­ ability of an extinct species, and within the context of samples available in the Museum, he attempted to define the theore tical and practical bas is for the taxo­ nomic determination of a fossil species. Different theo­ retical app roaches to taxonomic classifications have Department of Geotogy and Palaeontology, Croatian Mu seum of Natllral History, Dcmclrova I, HR- J 0000 Zagreb, Croatia. existed from the period of Linnaeus and attempts at identifying the living and non-living world in the natur­ al sys tem of "Scalae naturae". If discovery is merely the first distinct phasc of scientific activity, then descri­ ption and subsequent categorization, i.e. systemization of such discoveries follow, leading to a final, complete synthesis, and comprehension of the totality and causa­ lity of the world that we are studying. Herak incorpora­ ted all those levels of scienti fic inquary in his approach to science from the very beginning. It was already young Charles Darwin who wrote that geologists when deriving facts from the past need not always begin with the description of the colour or size of a pebb le of gravel discovered in a complex of depo­ sits. Considering the diversity of the grave l, distin­ gui shed by many detai ls or a classificatory typology, they would need, according to Darwin, thousands o/" years to describe the divers ity of all the gravel of the world. We cannot know whether these sentences or Darwin were to determine Herak 's approach in 1947 to studying the different "variet ies" or numerous featu res of fossil finds of cave bears in the collections of the Zagreb museum, bu t Herak's sentences indi cate an advanced level of theoretical knowledge and pract ice in the methodological approach to scientific work. "Thus we also sha/! 1I0t consider our material separately, rather we sheill affempt to estahlish its relation to the whole ... ", writes Professor Herak, " ... in this manner we shall cstablish thc systenwtic significancc of our cave hear, meaning that we shall he able to establish whe­ ther it can be considered a typical representativc (~f the species Ursl/s spelaclfs , or whcther this \ovas somc kind of new variety or race". Such refl ecti ons are not far from the fund amental v iewpoint of every palaeontoio­ gist today. Herak 's starting point for studying the varied cave bear rema ins, from diverse, ice age deposits and si tes throughout Croatia, represented for many, a new appro­ ach to distinguishing and understanding the complicated variability or "typologi es" of individual organi sms . Tt This paper was presented at the scientific meeting dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the life of Professor Milan Herak, held on March 5th, 1997 in Zagreb 148 was then neccssalY further to comprehend what is in the subs tratum of many biological processes, which afC eventually deciphered through the morphology or mor­ phometry of pctrified bones. Before we state the current judgment about this innovative work in Croatian palae­ ontology by Professor Herak, it is necessary for LIS to remember several almost general facts from the history of the palaeontological sciences. The fundamental methodological starting point [or cietcI111ining a foss il as some kind of document or entity according to which we classify and reconstruct the history of life on Earth has been known, probably from the 18th and certainly from the beginning of the [9th century. If the theory about the evolution of the living world , which originated in the middle of the last century, changed the central con­ cept of palaeontology, then the 1940's were the origin of the so-called synthetic evolutionary theory as a sort of scientific, Kuhn-derived paradigm, in a modern view of population biology. The works of Huxley, Fisher, Mayer, Stebbins, Wright, and in palaeontology, G.G. Simpson, changed the concept and approach to the study and understanding of variability, and subsequent­ ly the evOltllioll of the organic world. 11 should be emphasized that the first scientific activity of Herak in palaeontology corresponds 10 the years of the appear­ ance of new syntethic theory of evolution of the organic world, and in this context, Herak's 1947 paper is a sma ll , but significant con tribution from Croatian palaeontology to world literature that marked this per­ iod. Many modern books about the evolution of species teach us today thai nothing is worse for evaluating the work of a scientist studying the history of organic evo­ lution than an evaluation that someone in approaching a palaeontological determination of a fossil e ntity has gone no further than looking altypo log ies, the dist inc­ tion of a particular entity for which no biological s ignif­ icance is known of the complicated process of variabili­ ty. The color or size of those gravel pebbles of Dar­ win's, or the greater or lesser skull size of some animal, yet another secondary cusp on the molar of a large mammal, or some other isolated morphological fcature, are not in themselves the means by which the variabili­ ty of the organism is expressed, if in this we forget that no single leaf is identical to another on a many branched trec. "Ideal types" or even "morphotypes" arc only the philosophical fiction of our artificial, often subjective conceptual approach to the systemics of the organic world. Thus Herak, with his work on the hete­ rogeneous cave bear remains, began to move away from the current typological viewpoint of the palaeon­ tological determination of biological entities. "Large" and "small" bears and morphometrical large and small organisms existed once and exis t now. Establishing their existence is perhaps merely manufacturing a record about some of "Darwin's gravel", but studying the size, form, and structure of many pebbles, their ori­ gin, genesis, and much else relaled to the pebbles requires much greater knowledge about the mountain Geologia C roatic;l SO/2 from which the pebbles were derived , the [orees that rolled them, and the rock from which they originated. Today we know that typological conception, the dis­ tinction of types and morphotypes represents the oppo­ site to considering evolution through all individuals, the population of a given type from the area of its existe­ nce. As Herak stated, " ... in the first beginnings 0./ rese­ arching the cave bear, they tried to Ilote the forms I-vhi­ ch differ to a great extent from the rest as varielies. In this mallller, they ascribed some systematic classifica­ tion. However, more recent research", and here Profes­ sor Herak states, following Professor Ehrenberg of Vienna, " ... shows that there are no secure criteria or scient~fic basis according to which each phenomenon o.t variability need be noted as a varielY.", (i.e. morpho­ type) with clearly established sys tematic boundaries of independent classification. "All of this caused lIIe criti­ cally to cOllsider the material frolll ollr sites alld to ask if withiH this material there existed a forl1l tha! we could denote as a special variety or race o.lthe species Urslis spe/aells, i.e. do forms exist among them that agree ill principle with the others? Bur according to so­ me characterislics, which must in general be o.f a grad­ ual I/ature, they occupy al/ isolated and constallt spot IIOt merely among the forms from their own site, bllt also withill the general variant curve." Herak was particularly concerned in this study with the morphological variability of the cave bear remains from the classic Pleistocene s ite at Krapina. Its excava­ tor, D. Gorjanovic-Kramberger, allempted many times to examine the possible homogeneity of morphological variability in distinguishing species, varieties, races, types, and so forth. In his palaeoanthropologieal works he strongly resisted distinguishing various types of ancient hominids at the Krapina sile, instead writing more about the mechanism of perceived morphological variability. Thus according to Gorjanovic-Kramberger, "Homo hauseri" or "J-J. allrignaciel1sis" did not ex ist at Krapina, but rather the variable model "J-J. primigenius" (RADOYCIC, 1988) in contrast to the views or Kla­ atseh (KLAATSCH & HAUSER, 1910). Similarly, when GORJANOYIC-KRAMBERGER (19130) allrib­ uted the remains of a cave bear, or in another work a rhinoceros (GORJANOYIC-KRAMBERGER. 1913b). to indiv idual varieties or systemat ic categories, such as "race" or "breed", which he names as "krapiniensis" types, then this is more an expression to distinguish another popUlation, which is chronological ly or geo­ graphically separated [rom the comparative sample. In this segment of Gorjanovic-Kramberger's theoretical basis li es the beginning of the modern population approach to systemics, while in the work of Herak it is already a working hypothesis. Thus, in the morphologi­ cally "irregular" crown or the molar of the Ursl/S spelel/s species from Krapina, or in the diverse skulls and teeth of this animal from other Pleistocene sites in Croatia, Herak sees merely an emphasized morphologi­ cal variability over a wide area or a greater stratigraphic span of available samples. It was Ol1ee thought that the R:ldov'::i(:: Morphological V:lriabi lity as a Ila;;i ~ ror P;ILieoli toiogicai Clas~ ifi calioll " Krapina sequence" could represent a long Pleistocene spa n from the last interglacial (Riss-WOrm) to the penultimatc WUrm stage (MALEZ, L970), and thus a lengthy ch ronological sequence that would eventually justify the ex istencc of a special taxonomic unit. More recent determi nat ion or the absolute age of the Krapina site indi cates all entirely short stratigraphic span of Plei s toce ne deposits a t Krapina (RINK ct. aI., 1995). Thu s the wo rk or HERAK (l947), was a correct and sui tabl e tec hnique for Croatian palaeontology in that period. Unfortunately, a broader analysis of the palae­ ontologica l works that were to rollow Herak's text show a significant deviation from thi s work that could have served as a model. In conc lusion , Herak es tablished that individual exa mples of osteological material do not offer a basis for es tabli shing certain vari eties and races in the study or the characteristics of individual taxonomic entities . All dilfe rences between individual form s clearly can be clilTcrcnces of individual variability resulting fro m a combination or many biological mechanisms. Thus it seems justified to s tat e toelay that Herak in 1947 first introduced into Croatian palaeonlOlogicalliterature, the principle of populational approach in the classification of certain morphological variants, and that this occurred simultaneolls ly with the first similar attempts in interna­ tional lite rature . Finally, it seems to me today that oftcn in the lack or theore tica l and practical qualifications, as well as in ignora nce of the modern developments in palaeonto­ logy as a scientific discipline, in our profession and the pseudo new morphological considerat ion s, the typolo­ gica l manner or studying the fossil world is again beginning to appear, the es tablishment of specificities without taking into account the integrity and context of the tota lity, and even the entire organism. Sometimes certain works remain at the level of the study and dis­ tinc ti on of individual c lements (as the ancient Greeks saw in rire an clement instead of a prod:ss). Inasmuch as research into the organic world of the geological past is also rescarch into the once extant organic process, the dynamic re lation between population and the environ­ ment in some period, then the achievements and know­ ledge that Herak published fifty years ago is a founda ­ tion s tone that we need not speedi ly rill over. His dis ­ cussion about the systemization and characteristics of the cave bears of Croati a, printed in 1947, at the begin­ nin g or hi s prolific and many-faceted scientific career, remain s a c lassic lesson even for the rcsearchers of today. 14(j REFERENCES HERAK, M. (l947): Starost i sistcmatskc znacajke spiljskog medvjeda [-lrvatske (Age and systematic characteristics of cave-bear of Croatia).- Geo!. vjes­ nik, J (l947), 12-47. GORJANOYIC-KRAMBERGER, D. (l913a): Zivot i kultura diluvijalnoga covjeka iz Krapine u Hrvat­ skoj (Homo diluvialis e Krapina in Croatia vita et cultura).- Djela lugos!. akad. zn<:\n. umjetn., 23, 1- 54, Zagreb. GORJANOYIC-KRAMBERGER, D. (l9J3b): Fosilni rinoceratidi Hrvatske i Slavonije s osobitim obzirolll l1a Rhinoceros mercki iz Krapine.- Djcla lu gos!. akad. znan. umjetn. , 22, 1-70, Zagreb. KLAATSCH , H. & HAUSER , O. ( 19JO): HOlllo AlIr;­ RJ/Gciensis Hauseri. Ei n pahiolilischer Skclettfund aus dem unterCIl Aurignacien del' Station Combe­ Capelle bei Montferrand (Pcrigord).- Prahislorische Zeitsehr., 1, 273-338. MALEZ, M. (l970): Novi pogledi na strat igrariju kra­ pinskog nalazi'ta. - In: MALEZ, M. (cd.): Krapina 1899- 1969. Jugoslavenska akadelllija znanosti i umjetnosti, 13-44, Zagreb. RADOYCIC , J. (1988): Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kram ­ berger i krapinski pracovjek. Poeeci suvremene paleoantropologijc. (Dragutin Gorjanovic Kram ­ berger and Krapina early man. The foundations of modern palcoantropology). - Skolska knjiga, Zagreb, 176 p. RINK, W.J., SCHWARCZ, H.P. , SMITH, F.T-l. & RA­ DOYCIC, J. (J995): ESR dates Cor Krapina homi ­ nids.- Nature, 378,24. 150 lieologla CrOaIIC,\ )U/,L