Mirko Malez

Mirko Malez, PhD. (November 5, 1924 – August 23, 1990) was a prominent Croatian palaeontologist, speleologist, geo-scientist, ecologist and natural history writer. He was known as a "pioneer of Croatian speleoarchaeology". He was a member of the Yugoslav Academy, JAZU (present-day Croatian, HAZU - Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and one of only four Croatian PhDs of speleology (Josip Poljak 1922, Mirko Malez 1963, Srećko Božičević 1985, and Mladen Garašić 1986). Thanks to Malez's popularization of science, Varaždin county, in northern Croatia, is also known as a "cradle of the Palaeolithic age". Malez once described the emergence of early man in this area:

"Favourable climatic conditions, the flora and fauna present on the NW Croatian soils during the Pleistocene, enabled continuous immigration to this area, from the earliest Palaeolithic period until the upper Mesolithic. Hrvatsko Zagorje represented the natural ecumene for Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers through the whole period of the , and it is definitely a "cradle of Palaeolithic", not only for Croatia, but for the wider SE European area too."

In his honor four new species were named: Dalmatichthys malezi (Radovčić 1975), Ilyocypris malezi (Sokač 1978), Mimomys malezi (Rabeder 1983) and Vaccinites malezi (Slišković 1991) Most of his papers and research interests were directed towards fossil mammals of the and the paleontological processing of certain species, determining their taxonomy, migrations and palaeogeography.

Mirko Malez was born to a large family in the small town of Ivanec, in northwestern Croatia on 5 November 1924, at his family home. He was the first of six children of a local barber and amateur photographer Slavko Malez, and Matilda Malez (née Polak). He finished elementary school in 1939. In the summer of 1935, a local naturalist and archaeologist Stjepan Vuković organized an exhibition of prehistorical finds from Vindija Cave and Sever's quarry near Vuglovac, and this event in Malez's early childhood certainly affected his future career.

Malez did not immediately enrol in the local gymnasium, probably due to his family's financial circumstances. The nearness of the Ivanec lignite mine enabled him to take an electrician's apprenticeship instead. His ambitions were greater, but World War II interrupted his education. During the war, he worked as an assistant electrician and machinist at the Ivanec lignite mine. In 1945, he was deported by Yugoslav Partisans to captivity in Serbia, because he was associated with the Croatian Home Guard (Croatian: Hrvatsko domobranstvo, often abbreviated to Domobrani). Soon after, he was separated from the group to join a team repairing the local power plant.

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