Georges Cuvier
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Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier, known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure i
Portrait by François-André Vincent, 1795
Birthplace of Georges Cuvier in Montbéliard
Cuvier's tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Cuvier with a fish fossil
Paleontology
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Paleontology or palaeontology is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, me
Georges 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…
Bust of the paleontologist Georges Cuvier (left) and a cast skeleton of Palaeotherium magnum (named by Cuvier in 1804, right), Cuvier Museum of Montbéliard
The Dodo of Mauritius which has gone extinct in modern times
Cuvier's 1812 unpublished illustration of the extinct mammal Anoplotherium
Ernst Haeckel's "tree of life", illustrating an early understanding of how evolution relates to classification