Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>German palaeontologist Johannes Weigelt (1890–1948) was the first proponent of taphonomy – the study of the decay, burial and fossilization of plants, animals and other organisms across geological time. Thousands of his fossil specimens, many recovered from coal fields in central Germany, are stored within the Geiseltalmuseum – a palaeontological collection at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, founded by Weigelt in 1934. A significant portion of Weigelt's papers and extensive photographic production related to his taphonomic research are also within the museum's holdings. Amidst these documents, museum curator Dr Meinholf Hellmund and I discovered over forty photo-collages attributable to Weigelt. This visual essay exposes the through-lines between Weigelt's unpublished collages and his academic activities on taphonomy, suggesting the museum archive as a site of ideological fault lines crossing concomitant artistic and scientific production.</jats:p>