Georges Cuvier

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The Father of paleontology
Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier.png
Born (1769-08-23)23 August 1769
Died 13 May 1832(1832-05-13) (aged 62)
Nationality French
Fields Natural history, paleontology, anatomy
Institutions Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
Known for Le Règne Animal; establishing the fields of stratigraphy and comparative anatomy, and the principle of faunal succession in the fossil record; making extinction an accepted scientific phenomenon; opposing gradualistic theories of evolution
Author abbrev. (botany) Cuvier

Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier (French: [kyvje]; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "Father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.

Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology, and he expanded Linnaean taxonomy by grouping classes into phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into the classification.[1] Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813) Cuvier was interpreted to have proposed that new species were created after periodic catastrophic floods. In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century.[2] His study of the strata of the Paris basin with Alexandre Brongniart established the basic principles of biostratigraphy.

Among his other accomplishments, Cuvier established that elephant-like bones found in the USA belonged to an extinct animal he later would name as a mastodon, and that a large skeleton dug up in Paraguay was of Megatherium, a giant, prehistoric ground sloth. He named the pterosaur Pterodactylus, described (but did not discover or name) the aquatic reptile Mosasaurus, and was one of the first people to suggest the earth had been dominated by reptiles, rather than mammals, in prehistoric times.

Cuvier is also remembered for strongly opposing the evolutionary theories of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Cuvier believed there was no evidence for the evolution of organic forms, but rather evidence for successive creations after catastrophic extinction events.

His most famous work is Le Règne Animal (1817; English: The Animal Kingdom). In 1819, he was created a peer for life in honor of his scientific contributions.[3] Thereafter, he was known as Baron Cuvier. He died in Paris during an epidemic of cholera.

Some of Cuvier's most influential followers were Louis Agassiz on the continent and in America, and Richard Owen in England. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.


Portrait by François-André Vincent, 1795

Cuvier was born in Montbéliard, France (in department of Doubs), where his Protestant ancestors had lived since the time of the Reformation.[4] His father, Jean George Cuvier, was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guards and a bourgeois of the town of Montbéliard; his mother was Anne Clémence Chatel.[5] At the time, the town, which was annexed to France on 10 October 1793, belonged to the Duchy of Württemberg.[6] His mother, who was much younger than his father, tutored him diligently throughout his early years, so he easily surpassed the other children at school.[4] During his gymnasium years, he had little trouble acquiring Latin and Greek, and was always at the head of his class in mathematics, history, and geography.[7] According to Lee,[7] "The history of mankind was, from the earliest period of his life, a subject of the most indefatigable application; and long lists of sovereigns, princes, and the driest chronological facts, once arranged in his memory, were never forgotten."

Birthplace of Georges Cuvier in Montbéliard[8]

At the age of 10, soon after entering the gymnasium, he encountered a copy of Conrad Gessner's Historiae Animalium, the work that first sparked his interest in natural history. He then began frequent visits to the home of a relation, where he could borrow volumes of the Comte de Buffon's massive Histoire Naturelle. All of these he read and reread, retaining so much of the information, that by the age of 12, "he was as familiar with quadrupeds and birds as a first-rate naturalist."[7] He remained at the gymnasium for four years.

Cuvier spent an additional four years at the Caroline Academy in Stuttgart, where he excelled in all of his coursework. Although he knew no German on his arrival, after only nine months of study, he managed to win the school prize for that language. Upon graduation, he had no money on which to live as he awaited appointment to an academic office. So in July 1788, he took a job at Fiquainville chateau in Normandy as tutor to the only son of the Comte d'Héricy, a Protestant noble. There, during the early 1790s, he began his comparisons of fossils with extant forms. Cuvier regularly attended meetings held at the nearby town of Valmont for the discussion of agricultural topics. There, he became acquainted with Henri Alexandre Tessier (1741–1837), who had assumed a false identity. Previously, he had been a physician and well-known agronomist, who had fled the Terror in Paris. After hearing Tessier speak on agricultural matters, Cuvier recognized him as the author of certain articles on agriculture in the Encyclopédie Méthodique and addressed him as M. Tessier.

Tessier replied in dismay, "I am known, then, and consequently lost."—"Lost!" replied M. Cuvier, "no; you are henceforth the object of our most anxious care."[9] They soon became intimate and Tessier introduced Cuvier to his colleagues in Paris—"I have just found a pearl in the dunghill of Normandy", he wrote his friend Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.[10] As a result, Cuvier entered into correspondence with several leading naturalists of the day, and was invited to Paris. Arriving in the spring of 1795, at the age of 26, he soon became the assistant of Jean-Claude Mertrud (1728–1802), who had been appointed to the newly created chair of comparative anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes.[11]

The Institut de France was founded in the same year, and he was elected a member of its Academy of Sciences. On 4 April 1796 he began to lecture at the École Centrale du Pantheon and, at the opening of the National Institute in April, he read his first paleontological paper, which subsequently was published in 1800 under the title Mémoires sur les espèces d'éléphants vivants et fossiles. In this paper, he analyzed skeletal remains of Indian and African elephants, as well as mammoth fossils, and a fossil skeleton known at that time as the 'Ohio animal'.

Cuvier's analysis established, for the first time, the fact that African and Indian elephants were different species and that mammoths were not the same species as either African or Indian elephants, so must be extinct. He further stated that the 'Ohio animal' represented a distinct and extinct species that was even more different from living elephants than mammoths were. Years later, in 1806, he would return to the 'Ohio animal' in another paper and give it the name, "mastodon".

In his second paper in 1796, he described and analyzed a large skeleton found in Paraguay, which he would name Megatherium. He concluded this skeleton represented yet another extinct animal and, by comparing its skull with living species of tree-dwelling sloths, that it was a kind of ground-dwelling giant sloth.

Together, these two 1796 papers were a seminal or landmark event, becoming a turning point in the history of paleontology, and in the development of comparative anatomy, as well. They also greatly enhanced Cuvier's personal reputation and they essentially ended what had been a long-running debate about the reality of extinction.

In 1799, he succeeded Daubenton as professor of natural history in the Collège de France. In 1802, he became titular professor at the Jardin des Plantes; and in the same year, he was appointed commissary of the institute to accompany the inspectors general of public instruction. In this latter capacity, he visited the south of France, but in the early part of 1803, he was chosen permanent secretary of the department of physical sciences of the Academy, and he consequently abandoned the earlier appointment and returned to Paris. In 1806, he became a foreign member of the Royal Society, and in 1812, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1812 he became a correspondent for the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, and became member in 1827.[12]

Cuvier's tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Cuvier then devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiry: (i) the structure and classification of the Mollusca; (ii) the comparative anatomy and systematic arrangement of the fishes; (iii) fossil mammals and reptiles and, secondarily, the osteology of living forms belonging to the same groups.

In 1812, Cuvier made what the cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans called his "Rash dictum": he remarked that it was unlikely that any large animal remained undiscovered. Ten years after his death, the word "dinosaur" would be coined by Richard Owen in 1842.

During his lifetime, Cuvier served as an imperial councilor under Napoleon, president of the Council of Public Instruction and chancellor of the university under the restored Bourbons, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, a Peer of France, Minister of the Interior, and president of the Council of State under Louis Philippe. He was eminent in all these capacities, and yet the dignity given by such high administrative positions was as nothing compared to his leadership in natural science.[13]

Cuvier was by birth, education, and conviction a devout Lutheran,[14] and remained Protestant throughout his life while regularly attending church services. Despite this, he regarded his personal faith as a private matter; he evidently identified himself with his confessional minority group when he supervised governmental educational programs for Protestants. He also was very active in founding the Parisian Biblical Society in 1818, where he later served as a vice president.[15] From 1822 until his death in 1832, Cuvier was Grand Master of the Protestant Faculties of Theology of the French University.[16]

Scientific ideas and their impact[edit]

Opposition to evolution[edit]

Cuvier repeatedly emphasized that his extensive experience with fossil material indicated one fossil form does not, as a rule, gradually change into a succeeding, distinct fossil form. Because of this and his understanding of animal anatomy and physiology, Cuvier strongly objected to any notion of evolution. According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, "Cuvier did not believe in organic evolution, for any change in an organism's anatomy would have rendered it unable to survive. He studied the mummified cats and ibises that Geoffroy had brought back from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and showed they were no different from their living counterparts; Cuvier used this to support his claim that life forms did not evolve over time."[17]

Cuvier with a fish fossil

He also observed that Napoleon's expedition to Egypt had retrieved animals mummified thousands of years previously that seemed no different from their modern counterparts.[18] "Certainly", Cuvier wrote, "one cannot detect any greater difference between these creatures and those we see, than between the human mummies and the skeletons of present-day men."[19]

Lamarck dismissed this conclusion, arguing that evolution happened much too slowly to be observed over just a few thousand years. Cuvier, however, in turn criticized how Lamarck and other naturalists conveniently introduced hundreds of thousands of years "with a stroke of a pen" to uphold their theory. Instead, he argued that one may judge what a long time would produce only by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser time produced no organic changes, neither, he argued, would a much longer time.[20]

Cuvier was critical of the evolutionary theories proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which involved the gradual transmutation of one form into another. He repeatedly emphasized that his extensive experience with fossil material indicated one fossil form does not, as a rule, gradually change into a succeeding, distinct fossil form. Instead, he said, the typical form makes an abrupt appearance in the fossil record, and persists unchanged to the time of its extinction. Cuvier attempted to explain this paleontological phenomenon he envisioned (which would be readdressed more than a century later by "punctuated equilibrium") and to harmonize it with the Bible. He attributed the different time periods he was aware of as intervals between major catastrophes, the last of which is found in Genesis.[21][22]

Cuvier was skeptical of the gradual mechanisms of change that Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire proposed. Moreover, his commitment to the principle of the correlation of parts caused him to doubt that any mechanism could ever gradually modify any part of an animal in isolation from all the other parts (in the way Lamarck proposed), without rendering the animal unable to survive.[23] In his Éloge de M. de Lamarck (Praise for M. de Lamarck),[24][25] Cuvier wrote that Lamarck's theory of evolution


Cuvier's claim that new fossil forms appear abruptly in the geological record and then continue without alteration in overlying strata was used by later critics of evolution to support creationism,[26] to whom the abruptness seemed consistent with special divine creation (although Cuvier's finding that different types made their paleontological debuts in different geological strata clearly did not). The lack of change was consistent with the supposed sacred immutability of "species", but, again, the idea of extinction, of which Cuvier was the great proponent, obviously was not.

Many writers have unjustly accused Cuvier of obstinately maintaining that fossil human beings could never be found. In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth, he did say, "no human bones have yet been found among fossil remains", but he made it clear exactly what he meant: "When I assert that human bones have not been hitherto found among extraneous fossils, I must be understood to speak of fossils, or petrifactions, properly so called".[27] Petrified bones, which have had time to mineralize and turn to stone, are typically far older than bones found to that date. Cuvier's point was that all human bones found that he knew of, were of relatively recent age because they had not been petrified and had been found only in superficial strata.[28] He was not dogmatic in this claim, however, when new evidence came to light, he included in a later edition an appendix describing a skeleton that he freely admitted was an "instance of a fossil human petrifaction".[29]

The harshness of his criticism and the strength of his reputation, however, continued to discourage naturalists from speculating about the gradual transmutation of species, until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species more than two decades after Cuvier's death.[30]


At the time Cuvier presented his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, it was still widely believed that no species of animal had ever become extinct. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils found in Europe of animals such as the woolly rhinoceros and the mammoth were remains of animals still living in the tropics (i.e. rhinoceros and elephants), which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler.

Cuvier's early work demonstrated conclusively this was not the case.[31] Cuvier's thinking on extinctions was influenced by his extensive readings in Greek and Latin literature; he gathered every ancient report known in his day relating to discoveries of petrified bones of remarkable size in the Mediterranean region.[32]

Another influence on Cuvier's theory of extinction was his collection of specimens from the New World, many of them obtained from Native Americans. He also maintained an archive of Native American observations, legends, and interpretations of immense fossilized skeletal remains, sent to him by informants and friends in the Americas. He was impressed that most of the Native American accounts identified the enormous bones, teeth, and tusks as animals of the deep past that had been destroyed by catastrophe.[33]


These Indian elephant and mammoth jaws were included in 1799 when Cuvier's 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants was printed.

Cuvier came to believe that most, if not all, the animal fossils he examined were remains of species that had become extinct. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, he said:


This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism, which maintained that many of the geological features of the earth and the history of life could be explained by catastrophic events that had caused the extinction of many species of animals. Over the course of his career, Cuvier came to believe there had not been a single catastrophe, but several, resulting in a succession of different faunas. He wrote about these ideas many times, in particular he discussed them in great detail in the preliminary discourse (an introduction) to a collection of his papers, Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes (Researches on quadruped fossil bones), on quadruped fossils published in 1812.

The 'Preliminary Discourse' became very well known and, unauthorized translations were made into English, German, and Italian (and in the case of those in English, not entirely accurately). In 1826, Cuvier would publish a revised version under the name, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe (Discourse on the upheavals of the surface of the globe).[34]

After Cuvier's death, the catastrophic school of geological thought lost ground to uniformitarianism, as championed by Charles Lyell and others, which claimed that the geological features of the earth were best explained by currently observable forces, such as erosion and volcanism, acting gradually over an extended period of time. The increasing interest in the topic of mass extinction starting in the late twentieth century, however, has led to a resurgence of interest among historians of science and other scholars in this aspect of Cuvier's work.[citation needed]


Cuvier collaborated for several years with Alexandre Brongniart, an instructor at the Paris mining school, to produce a monograph on the geology of the region around Paris. They published a preliminary version in 1808 and the final version was published in 1811.

In this monograph they identified characteristic fossils of different rock layers that they used to analyze the geological column, the ordered layers of sedimentary rock, of the Paris basin. They concluded that the layers had been laid down over an extended period during which there clearly had been faunal succession and that the area had been submerged under sea water at times and at other times under fresh water. Along with William Smith's work during the same period on a geological map of England, which also used characteristic fossils and the principle of faunal succession to correlate layers of sedimentary rock, the monograph helped establish the scientific discipline of stratigraphy. It was a major development in the history of paleontology and the history of geology.[35]

Age of reptiles[edit]

In 1800 and working only from a drawing, Cuvier was the first to correctly identify in print, a fossil found in Bavaria as a small flying reptile,[36] which he named the Ptero-Dactyle in 1809,[37] (later Latinized as Pterodactylus antiquus)—the first known member of the diverse order of pterosaurs. In 1808 Cuvier identified a fossil found in Maastricht as a giant marine lizard, which he named Mosasaurus, the first known mosasaur.

Cuvier speculated correctly that there had been a time when reptiles rather than mammals had been the dominant fauna.[38] This speculation was confirmed over the two decades following his death by a series of spectacular finds, mostly by English geologists and fossil collectors such as Mary Anning, William Conybeare, William Buckland, and Gideon Mantell, who found and described the first ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and dinosaurs.

Principle of the correlation of parts[edit]

In a 1798 paper on the fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris Cuvier wrote:[39]

Today comparative anatomy has reached such a point of perfection that, after inspecting a single bone, one can often determine the class, and sometimes even the genus of the animal to which it belonged, above all if that bone belonged to the head or the limbs... This is because the number, direction, and shape of the bones that compose each part of an animal's body are always in a necessary relation to all the other parts, in such a way that—up to a point—one can infer the whole from any one of them and vice versa.


Principle of the conditions of existence[edit]

For Cuvier, the principle of the correlation of parts was justified theoretically by a further principle, that of the conditions d'existence, usually translated as "conditions of existence." This was his way of understanding function in a non-evolutionary context, without invoking a divine creator.[40] In the same 1798 paper he wrote:

if an animal's teeth are such as they must be, in order for it to nourish itself with flesh, we can be sure without further examination that the whole system of its digestive organs is appropriate for that kind of food, and that its whole skeleton and locomotive organs, and even its sense organs, are arranged in such a way as to make it skillful at pursuing and catching its prey. For these relations are the necessary conditions of existence of the animal; if things were not so, it would not be able to subsist.

This principle later influenced the positivist philosopher Auguste Comte, and the physiologist Claude Bernard.[41]

Scientific work[edit]

Comparative anatomy and classification[edit]

In 1798 Cuvier published his first independent work, the Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux, which was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the École du Pantheon and may be regarded as the foundation and first statement of his natural classification of the animal kingdom.



Cuvier's papers on the so-called Mollusca began appearing as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this branch were published in the Annales du museum between 1802 and 1815; they were subsequently collected as Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et à l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817.


Source unknown, but probably Times Literary Supplement (UK).



Palaeontology and osteology[edit]

Plate from Le Règne Animal, 1828 edition

In palaeontology, Cuvier published a long list of memoirs, partly relating to the bones of extinct animals, and partly detailing the results of observations on the skeletons of living animals, specially examined with a view toward throwing light upon the structure and affinities of the fossil forms.

Among living forms he published papers relating to the osteology of the Rhinoceros Indicus, the tapir, Hyrax capensis, the hippopotamus, the sloths, the manatee, etc.


The results of Cuvier's principal palaeontological and geological investigations ultimately were given to the world in the form of two separate works: Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes (Paris, 1812; later editions in 1821 and 1825); and Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe (Paris, 1825). In this latter work he expounded a scientific theory of Catastrophism.

The Animal Kingdom (Le Règne Animal)[edit]

Plate from Le Règne Animal, 1828 edition

Cuvier's most admired work was his Le Règne Animal. It appeared in four octavo volumes in 1817; a second edition in five volumes was brought out in 1829–1830. In this classic work, Cuvier presented the results of his life's research into the structure of living and fossil animals. With the exception of the section on insects, in which he was assisted by his friend Latreille, the whole of the work was his own. It was translated into English many times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge.

Racial studies[edit]

Cuvier was a Protestant and a believer in monogenism, who held that all men descended from the biblical Adam, however, his position usually was confused as being polygenist. Some writers who have studied his racial work have dubbed his position as "quasi-polygenist", and most of his racial studies have influenced scientific racialism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races: the Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow), and the Ethiopian (black). Cuvier claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian, the original race of mankind. The other two races originated by survivors escaping in different directions after a major catastrophe hit the earth 5,000 years ago, with those survivors then living in complete isolation from each other.[42][43]

Cuvier categorized these divisions he identified into 'races' according to his perception of the beauty or ugliness of their skulls and the quality of their civilizations. He placed the Caucasians at the top with the skull shape he considered the most beautiful, and the Ethiopians at the bottom.[44]

Cuvier wrote regarding Caucasians:


Regarding Ethiopians, he wrote that the race: marked by black complexion, crisped of woolly hair, compressed cranium, and a flat nose. The projection of the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the monkey tribe: the hordes of which it consists have always remained in the most complete state of barbarism.[46]

Cuvier's racial studies held the supposed features of polygenism, namely fixity of species; limits on environmental influence; unchanging underlying type; anatomical and cranial measurement differences in races; physical and mental differences between distinct races.[42]

Official and public work[edit]

Engraving by James Thomson

Apart from his own original investigations in zoology and paleontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official connected with public education generally; and much of this work appeared ultimately in a published form. Thus, in 1808 he was placed by Napoleon upon the council of the Imperial University, and in this capacity he presided (in the years 1809, 1811, and 1813) over commissions charged to examine the state of the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the Alps and the Rhine that had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these could be affiliated with the central university. He published three separate reports on this subject.

In his capacity, again, of perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of éloges historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but was also the author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural sciences, the most important of these being the Rapport historique sur le progrès des sciences physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810.


In 1826 he was made grand officer of the Legion of Honour; he subsequently was appointed president of the council of state. He served as a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 1830 to his death. A member of the Doctrinaires, he was nominated to the ministry of the interior in the beginning of 1832.


Statue of Cuvier by David d'Angers, 1838

Cuvier is commemorated in the naming of several animals; they include Cuvier's beaked whale (which he first thought to be extinct), Cuvier's Gazelle, Cuvier's toucan, Cuvier's bichir, Cuvier's dwarf caiman, Galeocerdo cuvier (tiger shark), and Anolis cuvieri, a lizard from Puerto Rico. There also are some extinct animals named after Cuvier, such as the South American giant sloth Catonyx cuvieri.

Cuvier Island in New Zealand was named after Cuvier by D'Urville.[47]

The professor of English Wayne Glausser argues at length that the Aubrey-Maturin series of 21 novels (1970–2004) by Patrick O'Brian make the character Stephen Maturin "an advocate of the neo-classical paradigm articulated .. by Georges Cuvier."[48]

Principal scientific publications[edit]

  • Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux (1797–1798)
  • Leçons d'anatomie comparée (5 volumes, 1800–1805) (text in French)[dead link]
  • Essais sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, avec une carte géognostique et des coupes de terrain, with Alexandre Brongniart (1811)
  • Le Règne animal distribué d'après son organisation, pour servir de base à l'histoire naturelle des animaux et d'introduction à l'anatomie comparée (4 volumes, 1817)
  • Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes, où l'on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d'animaux que les révolutions du globe paroissent avoir détruites (4 volumes, 1812) (text in French) 2 3 4
  • Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et à l'anatomie des mollusques (1817)
  • Éloges historiques des membres de l'Académie royale des sciences, lus dans les séances de l'Institut royal de France par M. Cuvier (3 volumes, 1819–1827) Vol. 1 , Vol. 2, and Vol. 3
  • Théorie de la terre (1821)
  • Essay on the Theory of the Earth. Blackwood. 1815. ISBN 978-1-108-00555-5. 
  • Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe et sur les changements qu'elles ont produits dans le règne animal (1822). New edition: Christian Bourgeois, Paris, 1985. (text in French)
  • Histoire des progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789 jusqu'à ce jour (5 volumes, 1826–1836)
  • Histoire naturelle des poissons (11 volumes, 1828–1848), continued by Achille Valenciennes
  • Histoire des sciences naturelles depuis leur origine jusqu'à nos jours, chez tous les peuples connus, professée au Collège de France (5 volumes, 1841–1845), edited, annotated, and published by Magdeleine de Saint-Agit
  • Cuvier's History of the Natural Sciences: twenty-four lessons from Antiquity to the Renaissance [edited and annotated by Theodore W. Pietsch, translated by Abby S. Simpson, foreword by Philippe Taquet], Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 2012, 734 p. (coll. Archives; 16) ISBN 978-2-85653-684-1

Cuvier also collaborated on the Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles (61 volumes, 1816–1845) and on the Biographie universelle (45 volumes, 1843-18??)

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Felipe Faria (2013). "Georges Cuvier et le premier paradigme de la paléontologie" [Georges Cuvier and the first paradigm of paleontology] (PDF). Revue de Paléobiologie (in French) 32 (2). ISSN 0253-6730. 
  2. ^ Faria 2012, pp. 64–74
  3. ^ Lee 1833
  4. ^ a b Lee 1833, p. 8
  5. ^ 'Extrait du 7.e Registre des Enfants baptises dans l'Eglise françoise de Saint Martin de la Ville de Montbéliard deposé aux Archives de l'Hôtel de Ville',
  6. ^ Montbéliard au XVIIIe siècle
  7. ^ a b c Lee 1833, p. 11
  8. ^ Philippe Taquet (2006). "Les années de jeunesse de Georges Cuvier" [Georges Cuvier's early years] (PDF) (in French). Société d’émulation de Montbéliard. p. 217. Retrieved 1 July 2015. 
  9. ^ Lee 1833, p. 22
  10. ^ Lee 1833, p. 22, footnote
  11. ^ Lee 1833, p. 23
  12. ^ "Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (1769 - 1832)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 19 July 2015. 
  13. ^ Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Appleton (1922) Vol.1 p.64
  14. ^ Coleman 1962, p. 16
  15. ^ Larson 2004, p. 8
  16. ^ Taquet 2009, p. 127
  17. ^ Waggoner 1996
  18. ^ Zimmer 2006, p. 19
  19. ^ Rudwick 1997, p. 229
  20. ^ Rudwick 1997, pp. 228–229
  21. ^ Turner 1984, p. 35
  22. ^ Kuznar 2008, p. 37
  23. ^ Hall 1999, p. 62
  24. ^ "Eloge de M. de Lamarck, par le Baron Georges Cuvier" [In Praise of M. de Lamarck, by Baron Georges Cuvier]. (in French). 27 June 1831. Retrieved 1 July 2015. 
  25. ^ "Cuvier's elegy of Lamarck". Retrieved 1 July 2015. 
  26. ^ Gillispie 1996, p. 103
  27. ^ Cuvier 1818, p. 130
  28. ^ Cuvier 1818, pp. 133–134; English translation quoted from Cuvier 1827, p. 121
  29. ^ Cuvier 1827, p. 407
  30. ^ Larson 2004, pp. 9–10
  31. ^ Rudwick 1997, pp. 22–24
  32. ^ Mayor 2000, 2011, pp. 6, 8, 202–207
  33. ^ Mayor 2005, pp. 2,61–63, 94–95 and Mayor 2008, pp. 163–82
  34. ^ Baron Georges Cuvier A Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe.
  35. ^ Rudwick 1997, pp. 129–133
  36. ^ Cuvier 1801
  37. ^ Cuvier 1809
  38. ^ Rudwick 1997, p. 158
  39. ^ Rudwick 1997, p. 36
  40. ^ See discussion in Reiss 2009
  41. ^ McClellan 2001
  42. ^ a b Jackson & Weidman 2005, pp. 41–42
  43. ^ Kidd 2006, p. 28
  44. ^ Isaac 2006, p. 105
  47. ^ "New Zealand Lighthouses: Cuvier Island". Archived from the original on 2002-03-17. 
  48. ^ Glausser, Wayne (March 2003). "Stephen Maturin in the Age of Lamarck: A Fictional Restoration of Cuvier". Mosaic (Winnipeg) 36 (1). (subscription required (help)).  Courtesy of Questia.
  49. ^ "Author Query for 'Cuvier'". International Plant Names Index. 


Further reading[edit]

  • Histoire des travaux de Georges Cuvier (3rd ed.). Paris. 1858. 
  • de Candolle, A. P. (1832). "Mort de G. Cuvier". Bibliothique universelle 59. p. 442. 
  • Flourens, P. J. M. (1834). Éloge historique de G. Cuvier.  Published as an introduction to the Éloges historiques of Cuvier.
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth. (December 16, 2013). "Annals of Extinction Part One: The Lost World." The New Yorker. p. 28. [1] Profile of Cuvier and his work on extinction and taxonomy.
  • Laurillard, C. L. (1836). "Cuvier". Biographie universelle. Supp. vol. 61. 
  • Outram, Dorinda (1984). Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France. Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • Corsi, Pietro (2005). Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur leur état actuel, présenté à Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi, en son Conseil d'État, le 6 février 1808, par la classe des sciences physiques et mathématiques de l'Institut... conformément à l'arrêté du gouvernement du 13 ventôse an X. Paris. 
  • Taquet, Philippe (2006). Georges Cuvier, Naissance d'un Génie. Paris: Odile jacob. ISBN 2-7381-0969-1. 

External links[edit]