Ferdinand Broili
Ferdinand Broili was a German paleontologist.
He studied natural sciences at the universities of Würzburg and Munich, where his influences were Karl von Zittel and August Rothpletz. In 1899 he received his doctorate from Munich with a dissertation on Eryops megacephalus, titled Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Eryops megacephalus. In 1903 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1908 became an associate professor at the university. In 1919 he was appointed director of the Staatssammlung fur Palaontologie und historische Geologie in Munich.
In 1901 he traveled to the Texas Red Beds, where with Charles Hazelius Sternberg, he collected and studied fossil vertebrates of the Permian period. Later on in his career, he carried out significant investigations of pterosaur fossils from the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria. In the 1930s, with Joachim Schröder, he published a 28 volume series on vertebrates of the Karoo Formation of South Africa. The Permian amphibian genus Broiliellus commemorates his name.
