Werner Janensch


Werner Ernst Martin Janensch was a German paleontologist and geologist.
In addition to Friedrich von Huene, Janensch was probably Germany's most important dinosaur specialist from the early and middle twentieth century. His most famous and significant contributions stemmed from the expedition undertaken to the Tendaguru Beds in what is now Tanzania. As leader of an expedition set up by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where he worked as a curator, Janensch helped uncover an enormous quantity of fossils of late Jurassic period dinosaurs, including several complete Brachiosaurus skeletons, then the largest animal ever known. During his long subsequent career, Janensch named several new dinosaur taxa including Dicraeosaurus and Elaphrosaurus. Janensch's Brachiosaurus were later determined to belong to a distinct, related genus, Giraffatitan.
His work at Tendaguru earned him several awards. The Prussian Academy of Sciences honored him with the silver Leibniz Medal in 1911. A year later, he was appointed Professor in geology and paleontology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. In 1913, he became a member, and in 1958 an honorary member, of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft.

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