Gustav Tornier

Gustav Tornier (Dombrowken (today Dąbrowa Chełmińska, Poland), 9 May 1858 – Berlin, 25 April 1938) was a German zoologist and herpetologist.

In the book, he took an uncompromisingly Darwinist stance, and applied the principles of natural selection and adaptation to the structures and functions of individual organisms.

Perhaps unfairly, Tornier's legacy has mainly been determined by his position in the controversy surrounding the posture of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus carnegii.

[7] Tornier had arrived at the same conclusion and forcefully supported Hay's argument, arguing that the tail couldn't physically have made the curve down to the ground.

[8] The hypothesis, at least as far as the position of the legs was concerned, was contested by W. J. Holland, who maintained that a sprawling Diplodocus would have needed a trench to pull its belly through.