Abstract The meteorite collection of the Natural History Museum of Vienna has the longest history of all comparable collections in the world. In the second half of the 18th century, soon after the foundation of the Imperial Natural History Cabinet in 1748, the Viennese curators began to collect meteorites. Owing to the efforts and scientific interest in meteorites of Carl von Schreibers (1775–1852) and his successors the Vienna collection became the largest and most extensive in the course of the 19th century. Simultaneously, the collection and its curators became one of the centres of the newly established science of meteoritics. The outbreak of the First World War and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy brought all these research activities and the growth of the collections at the Viennese museum to an abrupt end. Modest activities between the world wars were interrupted by the onset of the Second World War, again leading to a complete halt. It was not before the late 1960s that the situation improved and a budget for purchases permitted the acquisition of select contemporary meteorite falls and finds. From then on, the meteorites in the collection had again been used intensively for research purposes. Up until the end of the year 2003, the meteorite collection had increased to a total of 2336 localities.

Abstract The meteorite collection at the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History), Berlin, had its beginning in 1781 at the Royal Academy of Mining. Enlarged by donations from, among others, the Russian tsar Alexander I and Alexander von Humboldt, the collection in 1810 was transferred to the Mineralogical Museum of the newly founded University of Berlin. During the directorship of C.S. Weiss and later G. Rose, the private collections of M. Klaproth and E.F.F. Chaldni were acquired, and in 1864 the meteorite collection comprised fragments from 181 of the about 230 known meteorites. Based on studies of these meteorites, Rose proposed a classification scheme in 1863 that is still valid in principle today. He also introduced the terms chondrule, mesosiderite, pallasite, howardite, eucrite, chondrite and chassignite. In 1888 the collection was moved to the new Museum of Natural History and by 1906 the number of meteorites had increased to 500. In the following 60 years the meteorite collection did not receive much attention until G. Hoppe and his successor, H.-J. Bautsch again actively acquired new samples and studied meteorites scientifically. In 1993 Bautsch was followed by D. Stöffler and the study of meteorites became one of the main research interests of the Institute of Mineralogy. Stöffler also appointed a meteorite curator for the first time in the collection's history. As a result of two major acquisitions of Saharan meteorites, and continuous classification work, the number of separate meteorites increased to 2110 at the present time, making the collection both an exceptional historical heritage and a modern research tool.

Abstract The matching of meteorite types held in our collections to asteroid classes, and even individual asteroids, may perhaps be said to commence with Olmsted’s meteor researches and Wienek’s pioneering photographic meteor image taken in 1885. Photographic fireball network surveys started up during the 1960s and three major national programmes were initiated during this period; each resulting in the recovery of one meteorite, Přibram, Lost City and Innisfree. Although photographic surveys had low meteorite recovery rates they, nevertheless, provided invaluable data on the population of meteoroids in near-Earth space. Dynamical considerations are paramount in connecting meteorites with cometary or asteroidal sources of supply. Ernst Öpik originally raised the question of locating the mechanism for delivering asteroid fragments to Earth within a timescale and flux that matches known meteorite falls. Several workers took up Öpik’s 1963 challenge, so that today the dynamical conditions and potential delivery mechanisms existing at the Kirkwood Gaps within the asteroid belt are better understood. Pioneering work by Brobovnikoff in 1929 initiated the field of spectrophotometric studies of asteroid surfaces. He attempted to correlate asteroid spectra with the reflective properties of meteorites. Advances in instrumentation led McCord in 1969 to initiate the modern era of asteroid spectrophotometric studies. This is a burgeoning field of contemporary research that has had some success in identifying possible meteorite-asteroid class linkages and even possible meteorite-asteroid matches, i.e. Vesta and howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorites. However, space weathering of asteroid surfaces may mask the true asteroidal reflectance characteristics. In recent years spacecraft flyby missions have revealed more about the surface morphologies of asteroids: notably the S class asteroids (951) Gaspra, (243) Ida and the C class asteroid (253) Mathilde. Asteroids are no longer points of light or spectral curves but are bodies with distinct surface morphologies and geological histories. This was exemplified by the soft landing of the NEAR- Shoemaker spacecraft on (433) Eros in 2001 after a year-long orbital mission. However, it is still difficult to reconcile the meteorites held in our collections with the known distribution of asteroid classes and it may be that they are possibly incompatible sets.

Abstract The French national meteorite collection of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) represents one of the richest collections in the world in terms of its historical heritage and scientific value, particularly for samples of observed falls (512). In fact, early meteoritic research was dominated by French 18th and 19th century scientists such as René Just Haüy, Auguste Daubrée, Stanislas Meunier and Alfred Lacroix. They all contributed, along with Jean Orcel and Paul Pellas in the last 80 years, to form this exceptional collection. The fall at L'Aigle in 1803 led to the recognition of the nature of meteorites and the promotion of the science of meteoritics by Jean-Baptiste Biot. The first catalogue of the meteorite collection elaborated by Cordier in 1837 contained 43 specimens. The collection now contains about 3385 specimens representing 1343 distinct meteorites, to which can be added at least 3000 tektites and numerous specimens of impactites, casts, artificial samples and thin sections. France has the greatest number of meteorite falls by surface unit and by number of inhabitants, with 70 distinct meteorite falls recovered. The collection offers a diverse range of meteorites such as those containing rare presolar grains, the famous carbonaceous chondrite Orgueil (fall, 14 May 1864), the first martian meteorite, Chassigny (fall, 3 October 1815) and Ensisheim (fall, 7 November 1492), which is one of the two oldest observed and documented meteorites and the first meteorite to be registered in the catalogue. The MNHN collection represents a resource that is particularly appreciated by the scientific community.

Abstract The French geologist, mineralogist and experimental petrologist, Gabriel-Auguste Daubrée (1814–1896) was a leading scientist of his generation, possibly best known today for his application of the experimental method to structural geology. During his tenure of the Chair of Geology at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, to which he was appointed in 1861, he played a leading role in expanding its meteorite collection, developing a classification system for meteorites (1867), and using both petrological (1863–1868) and mechanical (1876–1879) experiments to gain a greater understanding of their chemical composition and how their physical attributes had arisen. This led him to believe in the ‘cosmic’ importance of peridotites and their hydrated equivalent, ‘serpentine’ (serpentinite), that the Earth might be unusual in having an oxygen-rich atmosphere and oceans, and that planetary bodies probably had a shell-like structure, increasing in density towards a nickeliferous iron core. (His ideas led to Eduard Seuss's SiAl–SiMa–NiFe model of the Earth.) Following the discovery, by the explorer Nils Nordenskiöld in 1870, of ‘native’ irons apparently associated with basalts at Disko Island, West Greenland, Daubrée took part in the subsequent investigation and the vigorous debate concerning their terrestrial or meteoritic origin.

ABSTRACT The Natural History Museum Vienna is one of the most important museums of natural history in the world. Its collections date back to the year 1750, when the Emperor Franz Stephan of Lorraine (Franz I. Stephan) purchased (from Italy) what was then the largest and most famous collection of natural history specimens. The meteorite collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria, has the longest history of all comparable collections in the world. In the second half of the eighteenth century, soon after the foundation of the Imperial Natural History Cabinet in 1750, the Viennese curators began to collect meteorites. Although the first curators neither believed in the extraterrestrial origin nor accepted—in several cases—the written and witnessed histories of these allegedly “heavenly” stone and iron masses, they preserved them in the Natural History collection. Among the first acquisitions were the historical important meteorites Hraschina (Agram), Tabor, Krasnojarsk (Pallas iron), and Eichstädt. These and other well-documented specimens from the Vienna collection were, for example, used by E.F.F. Chladni for his seminal treatises of 1794 and 1819, respectively. The central figure in the early history of the collection is Carl von Schreibers (1775–1852). After the fall of the Stannern meteorite in 1808, he availed himself of every opportunity to acquire meteorite specimens. His continued interest in meteorites laid the foundation for the Vienna collection to be of the historical and scientific importance it is today. Due to the efforts of Schreibers, who also is regarded as founder of meteoritic science in Vienna, and his successors, the Vienna collection became the largest and most extensive in the course of the nineteenth century. In terms of the geological and paleontological collections, early expeditions and collecting campaigns were mainly targeting exotic animals and plants, while paleontological objects were welcome but subordinate. It was only in the early nineteenth century that the paleontological collections were—literally and figuratively speaking—systematically enlarged. Internationalization and diversification became the focus of the collection strategy. The paleontology collections at the Vienna museum also became important in the Darwinian view of evolution.

Abstract From ancient times through to the Renaissance reports of stones, fragments of iron and ‘six hundred other things’ fallen from the sky were written down in books. With few exceptions, these were taken as signals of heaven's wrath. The 18th century Enlightenment brought an entirely new approach in which savants sought rational explanations, based on the laws of physics, for unfamiliar phenomena. They accepted Isaac Newton's dictum of 1718 that outer space must be empty in order to perpetuate the laws of gravitation, and, at the same time, they rejected an old belief that stones can coalesce within the atmosphere. Logically, then, nothing could fall from the skies, except ejecta from volcanoes or objects picked up by hurricanes. They dismissed reports of fallen stones or irons as tales told by superstitious country folk, and ascribed stones with black crusts to bolts of lightning on pyritiferous rocks. The decade between 1794 and 1804 witnessed a dramatic advance from rejection to acceptance of meteorites. The three main contributing factors were E.F.F. Chladni's book of 1794, in which he argued for the actuality of falls and linked them with fireballs; the occurrence of four witnessed and widely publicized falls of stones between 1794 and 1798; and chemical and mineralogicai analyses of stones and irons, published in 1802 by Edward C. Howard and Jacques-Louis de Bournon. They showed that stones with identical textures and compositions, very different from those of common rocks, have fallen at different times in widely separated parts of the world. They also showed that erratic masses of metallic iron and small grains of iron in the stones both contain nickel, so they must share a common origin. Meanwhile, in 1789, Anton-Laurent de Lavoisier had revived the idea of the accretion of stones within the atmosphere, which became widely accepted. Its chief rival was a hypothesis that fallen stones were erupted by volcanoes on the Moon. During the first half of the 19th century falls of carbonaceous chondrites and achondrites, and observations on the metallography of irons, provided fresh insights on the range of compositions of meteorite parent bodies. By 1860 both of the two main hypotheses of origins were abandoned, and debates intensified on whether all meteorites were fragments of asteroids or some of them originated in interstellar space. This paper will trace some of the successes and some of the failures that marked the efforts to gain a better understanding of meteorite falls from the end of the 15th century to the early 20th century.

Abstract Almost any change in the local structure of a crystal, such as replacement of one cation by another of different size, reordering of cations between neighbouring crystallographic sites, ordering of magnetic dipoles, Jahn–Teller distortions etc. , will give rise to two types of strain. Firstly, there will be a unit cell scale strain which will decay in magnitude as it extends away from the point where the structural change has occurred. Secondly there will be a net strain at a much longer length scale such as might be detected in the average lattice parameters of hundreds to thousands of unit cells. Both will be associated with a change in elastic energy. If the microscopic strain fields remain isolated or overlap in an uncorrelated way, the increase in elastic energy would be associated predominantly with local elastic strain heterogeneity. If the local strain fields interact in a correlated or collective manner, the change in elastic energy could be understood in terms of macroscopic distortions of a homogeneous material. The former might provide an appropriate model for solid solution formation, while the latter describes more or less what happens in a phase transition. For a complete description of solid state processes in minerals, it is necessary to understand the length scales over which such strain fields operate for a given type of structural change. In the limit of local strain fields only extending to first and second nearest neighbours, say, a model based on only a few unit cells might be sufficient to account

Abstract: ‘Serpent stones’ have been credited with medical efficacy since antiquity. Likely having their root in ancient traditions from India, accounts are now widespread across much of the world. Serpent stones are known by many names and descriptions of their appearance and medical uses are diverse; however, they commonly have a legendary association with serpents and are most frequently considered efficacious in the alexipharmic treatment of snakebite. This work presents and details five broad categories of serpent stone: a round white stone (thought to be extracted from the head of a dragon), a smooth lens-shaped black stone (purported to be taken from the head of a snake, but artificially manufactured of burnt bone or horn), ammonites (the fossilized shells of extinct cephalopods), glass or vitreous paste in the form of rings or beads, and serpentinite.

Abstract Over the last 65 Ma, our world assumed its modern shape. This timespan is divided into the Palaeogene Period, lasting from 65 to 23 Ma and the Neogene, which extends up to the present day (see Gradstein & Ogg (2004) and Gregory et al. (2005) for discussion about the Quaternary). Throughout the Cenozoic Era, Africa was moving towards Eurasia in a northward direction and with a counterclockwise rotation. Numerous microplates in the Mediterranean area were compressed, gradually fusing, and Eurasia underwent a shift from a marine archipelago to continental environments, related to the rising Alpine mountain chains ( Figs 17.1 & 17.2 ). Around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, Africa's movement and subduction beneath the European plate led to the final disintegration of the ancient Tethys Ocean. The Indo-Pacific Ocean came into existence in the east while various relict marine basins remained in the west. In addition to the emerging early Mediterranean Sea, another relict of the closure of the Tethys was the vast Eurasian Paratethys Sea. The Oligocene and Miocene deposits of Central Europe are largely related to the North Sea in the north, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the intermediate Paratethys Sea and its late Miocene to Pliocene successor Lake Pannon. At its maximum extent, the Paratethys extended from the Rhône Basin in France towards Inner Asia. Subsequently, it was partitioned into a smaller western part consisting of the Western and the Central Paratethys and the larger Eastern Paratethys. The Western Paratethys comprises the Rhône Basin and the Alpine Foreland Basin of Switzerland, Bavaria and Austria. The Central Paratethys extends from the Vienna Basin in the west to the Carpathian Foreland in the east where it abuts the area of the Eastern Paratethys. Eurasian ecosystems and landscapes were impacted by a complex pattern of changing seaways and land bridges between the Paratethys, the North Sea and the Mediterranean as well as the western Indo-Pacific (e.g. Rögl 1998 ; Popov et al. 2004 ). This geodynamically controlled biogeographic differentiation necessitates the establishment of different chronostratigraphic/geochronologic scales. The geodynamic changes in landscapes and environments were further amplified by drastic climate changes during the Cenozoic. The warm Cretaceous climate continued into the early Palaeogene with a distinct optimum near the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary (Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) and the Early Eocene (Early Eocene Climate Optimum). A gradual decrease in temperature during the later Eocene culminated in the formation of the first icesheets in Antarctica around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary ( Zachos et al. 2001 ; Prothero et al. 2003 ). A renewed warming trend that began during the Late Oligocene continued into the Middle Miocene with a climax at the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum. The turning point at around 14.2 Ma led to the onset of the Middle Miocene Climate Transition indicated by the cooling of surface waters and the expansion of the East Antarctic icesheet ( Shevenell et al. 2004 ). A final trend reversal during the Early Pliocene is reflected by a gentle warming until 3.2 Ma ( Zachos et al. 2001 ) when the onset of permanent Arctic glaciation heralded the Pleistocene ice ages (see Litt et al. 2008 ). The Cenozoic history of Central Europe is chronicled in a dense pattern of Palaeogene and Neogene basins. In addition to the more stable North Sea Basin, the majority of these basins were strongly influenced by the Alpine compressive tectonics which caused a general uplift of Europe during the Cenozoic (see Froitzheim et al. 2008 ; Reicherter et al. 2008 ). The marginal position of the seas covering the area and the considerable synsedimentary geodynamic control resulted in incomplete stratigraphic sequences with frequent unconformities, erosional surfaces and depositional gaps. This chapter deals with the Paleogene and Neogene (“Tertiary”) geological development of Central Europe and its adjacent areas. It is structured according to the main geological regions relevant for the Cenozoic: (1) The European Plate; (2) the Alps and Alpine Foredeep; (3) the Carpathians, their foredeep and the Pannonian Basins System; and (4) the Southern Alps and Dinarides. Each subchapter is arranged from west to east, and north to south.