 The name means "copper", though none is present along the river, and it is thought to have been named after Baron Georges Leopold Cuvier, a French naturalist and paleontologist, who was first to do comparative anatomy and the classification of animals and fossils.When France acquired the territory west of the Mississippi River, Cuvier sent two of his students to America to get specimens of flora and fauna and to assess the climate and topography of the new acquisition.When the young men reached the river in what is now the Lincoln County area, it was known to the local French as "Rivière aux Boeufs" because of the numerous bison roaming its banks.