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
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Cuvier's 1812 unpublished illustration of the extinct mammal Anoplotherium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
Leonardo da Vinci
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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initiall
Paleontology
…this time based on the presence of petrified bamboo in regions that in his time were too dry for bamboo. In unpublished notebooks, the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci justified an organic origin for the fossil shells available to him. His notes show observations of living mollusks and their ecology, the processes of…
Leonardo da Vinci's baptism record
The possible birthplace and childhood home of Leonardo in Anchiano, Vinci, Italy
The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475) by Verrocchio and Leonardo, Uffizi Gallery
Adoration of the Magi c. 1478–1482, Uffizi, Florence