Moritz Hörnes

Moritz Hörnes (14 July 1815 – 4 November 1868) was an Austrian palaeontologist. He worked as the curator of the imperial natural history cabinet in Vienna. He was born in Vienna and studied at the University of Vienna, where he earned a PhD. After that, he assisted Paul Maria Partsch in the Vienna mineralogical museum.

Hörnes is well known for his studies of ancient sea creatures called Mollusca from the Cenozoic period, especially around the Vienna Basin and Alpine areas. In 1864, he introduced the term Neogene to describe certain layers of rock that include both the Miocene and Pliocene periods. These layers sometimes have subtropical animals that slowly change to Mediterranean types.

Hörnes passed away in Vienna in 1868. In his honor, a mineral called hörnesite was named in 1860 by Wilhelm Haidinger. He also oversaw the careful weighing and copying of the famous Florentine Diamond. One of his sons, Rudolf Hoernes, followed in his footsteps and became a geologist and palaeontologist, teaching at the University of Graz.