Mikhail Zalessky

Russian paleobotanist (1877-1946).

Mikhail Dmitrievich Zalessky (Russian: Михаил Дмитриевич Залесский, Mikhail Dmitrievich Zalesskiy; 15 September 1877 – 22 December 1946) was a Russian paleontologist and paleobotanist. His main focus was an investigation of plant remains in coals and oil shales. In 1911, Zalessky described a new type of petrified wood from the Donets Basin in Ukraine. He called the wood Callixylon, though he did not find any structures other than the trunk. In the 1960s, it was demonstrated that the fossil wood known as Callixylon and the leaves known as Archaeopteris were actually part of the same plant. In 1