{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (August 23 1769 – May 13, 1832) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
naturalistNatural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards the observational than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research that is published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, Natural history is the systematic...
and
zoologistZoology, also spelled zoölogy, is the branch of biology that focuses on the structure, function, behavior, and evolution of animals. The zoologist's pronunciation of "zoology" is , though a common spelling pronunciation is .-Systems of classification:...
. Of humble working class origins, he belonged to a new class of self-made scholars who worked their way to the top of academe. Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century, and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
and
paleontologyPaleontology
[from Greek: παλαιός "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought"] is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
by comparing living animals with fossils. He is well known for establishing
extinctionIn biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or group of taxa. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species...
as a fact, being the most influential proponent of
catastrophismCatastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
in geology in the early 19th century, and opposing the gradualistic evolutionary theories of Lamarck and
Geoffroy Saint-HilaireÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
. His most famous work is the
Le Règne Animal (1817; English:
The Animal Kingdom). He died in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
of
choleraCholera, sometimes known as Asiatic or epidemic cholera, is an infectious gastroenteritis caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae from other cholera patients...
. In 1819, he was created a peer for the life in honor of his scientific contributions. Thereafter he was known as Baron Cuvier.
Life and scientific career
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier was born in
MontbéliardMontbéliard is a commune in the Doubs department in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It is one of the two sub-prefectures of the department.-History:...
, France (in department of
DoubsDoubs is a department in eastern France named after the Doubs River. Its pronunciation is /du/ .-History:...
), where his protestant ancestors had lived since the time of the Reformation. At the time the town lay in the Kingdom of
WürttembergWürttemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....
, but later became part of France (1805). He was the son of a retired military officer, who had served 40 years in the French army. His mother, who was much younger than his father, tutored him diligently throughout his early years so that he easily excelled the other children at school. During his
gynasiumA gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools...
years, he had little trouble acquiring Latin and Greek, and was always at the head of his class in mathematics, history, and geography. According to Lee (1833, p. 11), "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."
Soon after entering the gymnasium, at age 10, he encountered a copy of Gesner's
Historiae AnimaliumHistoriae animalium published at Zurich in 1551-58 and 1587, is an encyclopedic work of "an inventory of renaissance zoology" by Conrad Gesner, a doctor and professor at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zurich...
, 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
BuffonGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist and encyclopedic author. His collected information influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
's massive
Histoire Naturelle. All of these he read and re-read, retaining so much of the information that by the age of twelve "he was as familiar with quadrupeds and birds as a first-rate naturalist." He remained at the gymnasium for four years.
Cuvier spent an additional four years at the Caroline Academy in
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, where he excelled in all of his coursework. Although he knew no German on his arrival, after only nine months study he managed to win the school prize for that language. Upon graduation, he had no money to await appointment to academic office. So in July, 1788 he took a job in Normandy as tutor to the only son of the Comte d'Héricy, a Protestant noble. It was here during the early 1790s that 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), a physician and well-known agronomist who had fled the Terror in Paris and assumed a false identity. After hearing Tessier speak on agricultural matters, Cuvier recognized him as the author of certain articles on agriculture in the
Encyclopédie MéthodiqueThe Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières is a 206-volume encyclopedia that was published between 1782 and 1832 by the French publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke, and his daughter, Thérèse-Charlotte Agasse...
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." 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 ParmentierAntoine-Augustin Parmentier is remembered as a vocal promoter of the potato as a food source in France and throughout Europe...
. 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 anatomyComparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny .-Description:Two major concepts of comparative anatomy are:...
at the
Jardin des PlantesThe Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It is one of seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle...
.
The
Institut de FranceThe Institut de France is a French learned society, grouping five académies, the most famous of which is the Académie française....
was founded in the same year, and he was elected a member of its
Academy of SciencesThe French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
. In 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 palaeontological paper, which was subsequently 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
elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
s as well as
mammothA mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from...
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record...
s, 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 and therefore must be extinct. He further stated that the 'Ohio animal' represented another 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
mastodonMastodons or mastodonts were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut found in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
.
In his second paper in the year 1796, he would describe and analyse a large skeleton found in
ParaguayParaguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay , is one of the two landlocked countries which lie entirely within the Western Hemisphere, the other being Bolivia, both in South America....
, which he would name
megatheriumMegatherium was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to Central America and South America that lived from the Pliocene through Pleistocene existing approximately ....
. He concluded that 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 landmark event in the
history of paleontologyThe history of paleontology traces the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Paleontology is a field of biology, but its development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself...
and in the development of
comparative anatomyComparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny .-Description:Two major concepts of comparative anatomy are:...
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
extinctionIn biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or group of taxa. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species...
.
In 1799 he succeeded
DaubentonLouis-Jean-Marie Daubenton was a French naturalist.Daubenton was born at Montbard . His father, Jean Daubenton, a notary, intended him for the church, and sent him to Paris to study theology, but he was more interested in medicine...
as professor of natural history in the
College de FranceThe Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles...
. In 1802 he became titular professor at the
Jardin des PlantesThe Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It is one of seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle...
; 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 SocietyThe Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence...
and in 1812, a foreign members of the
Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesThe Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademin is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2 June...
.
He now 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
osteologyOsteology is the scientific study of bones. A subdiscipline of anthropology and archeology, osteology is a detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, morphology, function, disease, pathology, the process of ossification , the resistance and hardness of bones , etc...
of living forms belonging to the same groups.
In 1821, Cuvier made what has been called his "Rash
DictumIn legal terminology, dictum is a statement of opinion or belief considered authoritative because of the dignity of the person making it....
": he remarked that it was unlikely that any large animal remained undiscovered. Many such discoveries have been made since Cuvier's statement.
Extinction
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, because God's creation had been perfect. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils found in Europe of animals such as the wooly rhinoceros and mammoth were remains of animals still living in the tropics (ie
rhinocerosRhinoceros , often colloquially abbreviated rhino, is a name used to group five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia. Three of the five species—the Javan, Sumatran and Black Rhinoceros—are...
and elephants), which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler. Cuvier's early work demonstrated conclusively that this was not the case.
Catastrophism
Cuvier came to believe that most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of species that were now extinct. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants he said:
- All of these facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem to me to prove the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe.
This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called
catastrophismCatastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
that maintained that many of the geological features of the earth and the past 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 that 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 (introduction) to a collection of his papers,
Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes, on
quadrupedQuadrupedalism is a form of land animal locomotion using four limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a quadrupedal manner is known as a quadruped, meaning "four feet"...
fossils published in 1812. The 'Preliminary Discourse' became very well known and unauthorized (and in the case of English not entirely accurate) translations were made into English, German and Italian. In 1826 Cuvier would publish a revised version under the name
Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe.
After Cuvier's death the catastrophic school of geological thought lost ground to
uniformitarianismUniformitarianism, in the philosophy of science, assumes that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe...
, as championed by
Charles LyellSir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt, FRS was a British lawyer, geologist, and proponent of uniformitarianism. He was the foremost geologist of his day, and an influence on the young Charles Darwin.- Life :...
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. However, the increasing interest in the topic of mass extinction starting in the late 20th century has led to a resurgence of interest among historians of science and other scholars in this aspect of Cuvier's work.
Stratigraphy
Cuvier collaborated for several years with
Alexandre BrongniartAlexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris...
, 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 SmithWilliam Smith was an English geologist, credited with creating the first nationwide geological map. He is known as the "Father of English Geology", although recognition was very slow in coming...
'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
stratigraphyStratigraphy, a branch of geology, studies rock layers and layering . It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks....
. It was a major development in the
history of paleontologyThe history of paleontology traces the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Paleontology is a field of biology, but its development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself...
and the
history of geologyThe history of geology is concerned with the development of the natural science of geology. Geology is the scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the Earth. Throughout the ages geology provides essential theories and data that shape how society conceptualizes the...
.
Age of reptiles
In 1800, Cuvier was the first to correctly identify in print, working only from a drawing, a fossil found in Bavaria as a small flying reptile, which he named the
Ptero-Dactyle in 1809 (later Latinized as
Pterodactylus antiquusPterodactylus is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period. It was a carnivore and probably preyed upon fish and other small animals. Like all pterosaurs, the wings of Pterodactylus were formed by a skin and muscle membrane stretching from its elongated fourth finger to its...
)--the first known member of the diverse order of
pterosaurPterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period...
s. In 1808 Cuvier identified a fossil found in
MaastrichtMaastricht is a city and a municipality in the southern part of the Dutch province of Limburg, of which it is the capital. The city is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
as giant marine lizard, which he named
MosasaurusMosasaurus was a genus of mosasaur, a carnivorous, aquatic lizard, somewhat resembling a flippered crocodile, with elongated heavy jaws. The genus lived in the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period , around 70-65 millions years ago in the area of modern Western Europe...
, the first known
mosasaurMosasaurs were serpentine marine reptiles. The first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764...
. Cuvier speculated that there had been a time when
reptileReptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, generally "cold-blooded" amniotes that generally have skin covered in scales or scutes. They are tetrapods and lay amniote eggs, whose embryos are surrounded by the amnion membrane...
s rather than
mammalMammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands while both males and females are characterized by sweat glands, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.Mammals are divided into three main...
s had been the dominant fauna. This speculation was confirmed over the next two decades by a series of spectacular finds, mostly by English geologists and fossil collectors, who found and described the first
ichthyosaurIchthyosaurs were giant marine reptiles that resembled fish and dolphins...
s,
plesiosaurA plesiosaur was a type of carnivorous aquatic reptile. After their discovery, plesiosaurs were somewhat fancifully said to have resembled "a snake threaded through the shell of a turtle", although they had no shell...
s, and
dinosaur{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Taxobox|name = Dinosaurs|fossil_range = {{Fossil range|230|65|earliest=230|latest=0|PS=
Descendant taxon Aves survives to present.}}|image = field_dinos_2.jpg...
s.
Principle of correlation of parts
In a 1798 paper on the fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris Cuvier wrote:
- 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.
This idea is sometimes referred to as 'Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts', and while Cuvier's description may somewhat exaggerate its power, the basic concept is central to comparative anatomy and paleontology.
Opposition to gradualistic theories of evolution
Cuvier was critical of the evolutionary theories proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and
Geoffroy Saint-HilaireÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
, which involved the gradual transmutation of one form into another. He repeatedly emphasized that his extensive experience with fossil material indicated that 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 (this is the well-documented paleontological phenomenon now referred to as "punctuated equilibrium"). In other words, Cuvier was a saltationist. While, like other saltationists, he offered no explanation of how saltational evolution might occur, he was skeptical of the gradual mechanisms of change that Lamarck and
Geoffroy Saint-HilaireÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
proposed. Moreover, his commitment to the principle of 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. In his
Éloge de M. de Lamarck (
Praise for M. de Lamarck),
, Cuvier noted that Lamarck's theory of evolution
- "rested on two arbitrary suppositions; the one, that it is the seminal vapor which organizes the embryo; the other, that efforts and desires may engender organs. A system established on such foundations may amuse the imagination of a poet; a metaphysician may derive from it an entirely new series of systems; but it cannot for a moment bear the examination of anyone who has dissected a hand, a viscus, or even a feather."
He also pointed out that Napoleon's expedition to Egypt had retrieved animals mummified thousands of years previously that seemed no different from their modern counterparts. "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." 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 can only judge what a long time would produce by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser time produced no organic changes, neither, probably, would a much longer time.
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 thinkers to support creationism (Gillispie 1996, p. 103). The abruptness seemed consistent with special creation by God (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.
In particular, he nowhere refers to the Bible in scientific argument. In fact, his claims concerning past history often conflicted with Scripture (Coleman 1962; Russell 1982). A creationist would say that the various life forms existing today are not only constant in form over time, but also that they have been constant since "the Beginning." Cuvier consistently argued the contrary (i.e., that new types regularly replace older types in the fossil record). Cuvier explained the abrupt appearance of new fossil forms in terms of immigration, not creation: "I only say that they did not originally inhabit the places where we find them at present, and that they must have come from some other part of the globe" (Cuvier 1827, p. 113; Russell 1982, p. 41–44). Nowhere did he advance the hypothesis of successive new creations (Russell 1982, p. 43). Moreover, since he consistently promoted the idea that there has been a temporal succession of forms in the geological record (ibid), he could not have believed the various life forms that exist today were specially created "in the Beginning."
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 that "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" (Cuvier 1818, p. 130). Petrified bones, which have had time to mineralize and turn to stone, are typically far older than ordinary bones. Cuvier's point was that all human fossils that he knew of were of relatively recent age because they 1) had not been petrified and 2) had been found only in superficial strata (Cuvier 1818, pp. 133–134; English translation quoted from Cuvier 1827, p. 121). But he was not dogmatic in this claim. 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" (Cuvier 1827, p. 407).
The harshness of his criticism and the strength of his reputation continued to discourage naturalists from speculating about the gradual transmutation of species, right up until
DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
published
The Origin of SpeciesCharles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published Thursday, 24 November 1859, is a seminal work of scientific literature considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in...
more than two decades after Cuvier's death.
On comparative anatomy and classification
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.
In 1800 he published the
Leçons d'anatomie comparée, assisted by
A. M. C. DumérilAndré Marie Constant Duméril was a French zoologist. He was professor of anatomy at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle from 1801 to 1812, when he became professor of herpetology and ichthyology...
for the first two volumes and
Georges Louis DuvernoyGeorges Louis Duvernoy was a French zoologist. He assisted Georges Cuvier in writing Leçons d'anatomie comparée. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1847 and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1851....
for the three later ones.
On molluscs
Cuvier's papers on the 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 de l'histoire et a l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817.
On fish
Cuvier's researches on
fishA fish is any aquatic vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scales, and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins...
, begun in 1801, finally culminated in the publication of the
Histoire naturelle des poissons, which contained descriptions of 5000 species of fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and
Achille ValenciennesAchille Valenciennes was a French zoologist.Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. Valenciennes' study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology...
. Cuvier's work on this project extended over the years 1828–1831.
On palaeontology and osteology
In this field 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 of throwing light upon the structure and affinities of the fossil forms.
Among living forms he published papers relating to the osteology of the
RhinocerosRhinoceros , often colloquially abbreviated rhino, is a name used to group five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia. Three of the five species—the Javan, Sumatran and Black Rhinoceros—are...
Indicus, the
tapirA tapir is a large browsing mammal, roughly pig-like in shape, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs, being the Brazilian tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's tapir and the...
,
HyraxA hyrax is any of four species of fairly small, thickset, herbivorous mammals in the order Hyracoidea. They live in Africa and the Middle East....
capensis, the
hippopotamusThe hippopotamus or hippo is a large, mostly plant-eating mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae...
, the
slothThe living sloths comprise six species of medium-sized mammals belonging to the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, part of the order Pilosa. They are arboreal residents of the rainforests of Central and South America. The sloth's taxonomic suborder is Folivora, while some call it Phyllophaga...
s, the
manateeManatees are large, fully aquatic marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. They are noted for their rather friendly nature, large size and paddle-like flippers. The name manatí comes from the Taíno, a pre-Columbian people of the Caribbean, meaning "breast"...
, etc.
He produced an even larger body of work on fossils, dealing with the extinct mammals of the
EoceneThe Eocene epoch, lasting from 55.8 ± 0.2 to 33.9 ± 0.1 Ma , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Palaeogene period in the Cenozoic era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene epoch. The start of the...
beds of
MontmartreMontmartre is a hill which is 130 meters high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
, the fossil species of
hippopotamusThe hippopotamus or hippo is a large, mostly plant-eating mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae...
, a
marsupialMarsupials are an infraclass of mammals, characterized by a distinctive pouch , in which females carry their young through early infancy.- History :...
(which he called
Didelphys gypsorum), the
MegalonyxMegalonyx is an extinct genus of giant ground sloths living from the Hemphillian of the Late Miocene through to the Rancholabrean of the Late Pleistocene . Their closest living relatives are the two-toed sloths .Endemic to North America, these animals are the most widespread fossils of the family...
, the
MegatheriumMegatherium was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to Central America and South America that lived from the Pliocene through Pleistocene existing approximately ....
, the cave-
hyenaThe Hyaenidae is a mammalian family of order Carnivora. The Hyaenidae family, native to both African and Asian continents, consists of four living species, the Striped Hyena and Brown Hyena , the Spotted Hyena , and the Aardwolf .-Evolution:Hyenas seem to have originated 26 million years ago from...
, the
pterodactylPterodactylus is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period. It was a carnivore and probably preyed upon fish and other small animals. Like all pterosaurs, the wings of Pterodactylus were formed by a skin and muscle membrane stretching from its elongated fourth finger to its...
, the extinct species of
rhinocerosRhinoceros , often colloquially abbreviated rhino, is a name used to group five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia. Three of the five species—the Javan, Sumatran and Black Rhinoceros—are...
, the
cave bearThe Cave Bear was a species of bear which lived in Europe during the Pleistocene and became extinct at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum about 27,500 years ago....
, the
mastodonMastodons or mastodonts were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut found in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
, the extinct species of
elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
,
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record...
species of manatee and seals, fossil forms of
crocodiliansA crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...
,
chelonianChelonian has multiple, interrelated meanings:*Chelonian, a member of the order of tortoises called Chelonia, also called Testudines*Chelonia, monsters from Doctor Who...
s, fish,
birdBirds are winged, bipedal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the Bee Hummingbird to the ...
s, etc. The department of palaeontology dealing with the
MammalMammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands while both males and females are characterized by sweat glands, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.Mammals are divided into three main...
ia may be said to have been essentially created and established by Cuvier.
The results of Cuvier's principal palaeontological and geological investigations were ultimately 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
CatastrophismCatastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
.
The Animal Kingdom
None of Cuvier's works attained a higher reputation than his
Le Règne Animal, the first edition of which appeared in four octavo volumes in 1817, and the second in five volumes in 1829–1830. In this classic work Cuvier embodied the results of the whole of his previous researches on the structure of living and fossil animals. The whole of the work was his own, with the exception of the section on
InsectInsects are arthropods, having a hard exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae. They are the most diverse group of animals on the planet and include more than a million species that are already described. Insects represent more than half of all...
a, in which he was assisted by his friend
LatreillePierre André Latreille was a French entomologist. His works describing insects assigned many of the insect taxa still in use today....
. It was translated into English many times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge.
Official and public work
Apart from his own original investigations in zoology and
paleontologyPaleontology
[from Greek: παλαιός "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought"] is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
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
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
upon the council of the
Imperial University-France:Imperial University or University of France refers to the French university re-organisation initiated by Napoleon.-Japan:...
, 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
AlpsThe Alps are one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west....
and the
RhineThe Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, at , with an average discharge of more than ....
which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this subject were published by him.
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 he was 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.
Prior to the fall of Napoleon (1814) he had been admitted to the council of state, and his position remained unaffected by the restoration of the Bourbons. He was elected chancellor of the university, in which capacity he acted as interim president of the council of public instruction, whilst he also, as a Lutheran, superintended the faculty of Protestant theology. In 1819 he was appointed president of the committee of the interior, and retained the office until his death.
In 1826 he was made grand officer of the
Legion of HonourThe Légion d'honneur or Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
; he was subsequently appointed president of the council of state. Member of the
DoctrinairesDoctrinaires was the name given during the Bourbon Restoration to the little group of French Royalists who hoped to reconcile the Monarchy with the Revolution, and power with liberty...
, he was nominated to the ministry of the interior in the beginning of 1832.
Animals named after Cuvier
Cuvier is commemorated in the naming of many animals; they include
Cuvier's beaked whaleCuvier's Beaked Whale, Ziphius cavirostris is the most widely distributed of all the beaked whales. It is the only member of the genus Ziphius. Another common name for the species is Goose-beaked Whale on account of the fact that its head is said to be shaped like the beak of a goose...
,
Cuvier's GazelleCuvier's Gazelle Gazella cuvieri is a species of gazelle from northern Africa. It was named for the scientist Georges Cuvier. It is very rare in wild with only 2000 individuals.- Characteristics :...
,
Cuvier's toucanThe White-throated Toucan is a near-passerine bird found throughout the Amazon in south-eastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, northern Bolivia, southern and eastern Venezuela, northern and western Brazil, including the Amazon Basin's adjacent Tocantins-Araguaia River drainage, and the...
,
Cuvier's BichirThe Senegal Bichir, Polypterus senegalus, also known as the Grey Bichir and Cuvier's Bichir, is sometimes called the dinosaur eel at many local pet chains - a misnomer, as the creature is not an eel...
,
Galeocerdo cuvier (
tiger sharkThe tiger shark, Galeocerdo cuvier is a species of requiem shark and the only member of the genus Galeocerdo. Mature sharks average 3.25 to 4.25 m long and weigh . It can attain a length of over 7.25 m and a weight of 900 kg at maximum...
), and
Anolis cuvieriAnolis is a genus of lizards belonging to the family Polychrotidae. With nearly 400 species, Anolis represents the world's most species rich amniote genus. Several species of Anolis are occasionally ascribed to the genus Norops, but the validity of the Norops genus is not widely accepted...
, a lizard from Puerto Rico. There are also some extinct animals named after Cuvier, such as the South American giant sloth
Catonyx cuvieri.
Principle Scientific Publications
- Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux (1797-1798)
- Leçons d'anatomie comparée (5 volumes, 1800-1805) (text in French)
- Essais sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, avec une carte géognostique et des coupes de terrain, with Alexandre Brongniart
Alexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris...
(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 , (text in French)
- Théorie de la terre (1821)
- 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
Achille Valenciennes was a French zoologist.Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. Valenciennes' study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology...
- 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 also collaborated on the
Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles (61 volumes, 1816-1845) and on the
Biographie universelle (45 volumes, 1843-18??)
See also
- Frédéric Cuvier
Frédéric Cuvier was a French zoologist. He was the younger brother of noted naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier....
, also a naturalist, was Georges Cuvier's younger brother.
- Saartjie Baartman
Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman was the most famous of at least two Khoikhoi women who were exhibited as sideshow attractions in 19th century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" as the then-current name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term, and "Venus" in reference...
, the "Hottentot Venus" whose body Cuvier examined
- History of paleontology
The history of paleontology traces the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Paleontology is a field of biology, but its development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself...
for more on the impact of Cuvier's scientific ideas
External links
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Académie françaiseL'Académie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was...
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