Ferdinand Broili

Ferdinand Broili (11 April 1874 in Mühlbach – 30 April 1946 in Mühlbach) was a German paleontologist. He took a special interest in the Permian amphibians and reptiles and described the fossil tetrapod Seymouria in 1904. He revised Zittel's Grundzüge der Paleontologie.

Broili was born the son of J. B. Broili, squire, in Mühlbach Castle in Lower Franconia. He studied natural sciences at the universities of Würzburg and Munich, where his influences were Karl von Zittel and August Rothpletz. In 1899 he received his doctorate from Munich with a dissertation on Eryops megacephalus, titled Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Eryops megacephalus. In 1903 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1908 became an associate professor at the university. In 1919 he was appointed director of the Staatssammlung fur Palaontologie und historische Geologie ("State Collection for Paleontology and Historical Geology") in Munich.

In 1901 he traveled to the Texas Red Beds, where with Charles Hazelius Sternberg, he collected and studied fossil vertebrates of the Permian period. In 1903 his habilitation was on the fauna of the pachycardia tuff. Later on in his career, he carried out significant investigations of pterosaur fossils from the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria. In the 1930s, with Joachim Schröder, he published a 28 volume series on vertebrates of the Karoo Formation of South Africa (Beobachtungen an Wirbeltieren der Karroo Formation; 1934–37). The Permian amphibian genus Broiliellus commemorates his name. He retired in 1939. His collections were destroyed in the bombing of Munich and he moved back to his paternal estate.