Hans C. Bjerring

Who is Hans C. Bjerring?

Hans Christian Bjerring is a Danish-Swedish vertebrate paleontologist and comparative anatomist. He has spent his career at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden, as curator at the Department of Palaeozoology.

Bjerring's research is mainly about the fundamental structure of the head in vertebrate evolution. His studies are based on detailed analyses of models of the crania of the sarcopterygian fishes Eusthenopteron foordi and Glyptolepis groenlandica from the Devonian as well as serially-sectioned embryos of fishes and urodeles. He belongs to the Stockholm school of paleontology together with, among others, Erik Stensiö, Erik Jarvik, Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh, and Tor Ørvig.

A recurrent theme in Bjerring’s research is that much of the vertebrate head is formed by a complex intertwining of serially homologous anatomical segments. According to Bjerring, this holds both for the distribution and composition of cranial nerves, the pharyngeal arches and their contributions to the braincase organs and structures derived from the pharyngeal clefts as well as muscles and cartilages at the base of the skull.