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69-590: The Horneophytopsida , informally called horneophytes , are a class of extinct plants which consisted of branched stems without leaves, true roots or vascular tissue , found from the Late Silurian to the Early Devonian (around 430 to 390  million years ago ). They are the simplest known polysporangiophytes , i.e. plants with sporophytes bearing many spore-forming organs ( sporangia ) on branched stems. They were formerly classified among

138-466: A convenient "artificial key" according to his Systema Sexuale , largely based on the arrangement of flowers. In botany, classes are now rarely discussed. Since the first publication of the APG system in 1998, which proposed a taxonomy of the flowering plants up to the level of orders, many sources have preferred to treat ranks higher than orders as informal clades . Where formal ranks have been assigned,

207-548: A famous debate , which is said to exemplify the two major deviations in biological thinking at the time – whether animal structure was due to function or (evolutionary) morphology. Cuvier supported function and rejected Lamarck's thinking. Cuvier also conducted racial studies which provided part of the foundation for scientific racism , and published work on the supposed differences between racial groups' physical properties and mental abilities. Cuvier subjected Sarah Baartman to examinations alongside other French naturalists during

276-728: 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 a member in 1827. Cuvier was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822. Cuvier then devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiry: (i)

345-475: A fossil skeleton known at that time as the "Ohio animal". 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

414-547: 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

483-418: 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. 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

552-418: A moment bear the examination of anyone who has dissected a hand, a viscus, or even a feather. 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

621-581: A pearl in the dunghill of Normandy", he wrote his friend Antoine-Augustin Parmentier . 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 chair of Animal Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes . When Mertrud died in 1802, Cuvier replaced him in office and

690-422: A period in which she was held captive in a state of neglect. Cuvier examined Baartman shortly before her death, and conducted a dissection following her death that disparagingly compared her physical features to those of monkeys. Cuvier's most famous work is Le Règne Animal (1817; English: The Animal Kingdom ). In 1819, he was created a peer for life in honour of his scientific contributions. Thereafter, he

759-707: 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." They soon became intimate and Tessier introduced Cuvier to his colleagues in Paris"I have just found

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828-457: A popular legend that Cuvier could reconstruct the entire bodily structures of extinct animals given only a few fragments of bone. 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

897-603: A rule, gradually change into a succeeding, distinct fossil form. A deep-rooted source of his opposition to the gradual transformation of species was his goal of creating an accurate taxonomy based on principles of comparative anatomy. Such a project would become impossible if species were mutable, with no clear boundaries between them. 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

966-490: 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

1035-524: A species. This differed widely from Cuvier's theory, which seemed to propose that animal extinction was catastrophic. However, Cuvier's theory of extinction is still justified in the case of mass extinctions that occurred in the last 600 million years, when approximately half of all living species went completely extinct within a short geological span of two million years, due in part by volcanic eruptions, asteroids, and rapid fluctuations in sea level. At this time, new species rose and others fell, precipitating

1104-603: A way, his chronological dating of Earth's history somewhat reflected Lamarck's transformationist theories. Cuvier also worked alongside Alexandre Brongniart in analyzing the Parisian rock cycle. Using stratigraphical methods, they were both able to extrapolate key information regarding Earth history from studying these rocks. These rocks contained remnants of molluscs, bones of mammals, and shells. From these findings, Cuvier and Brongniart concluded that many environmental changes occurred in quick catastrophes, though Earth itself

1173-570: Is also placed outside the tracheophyte clade , as it did not possess true vascular tissue (in particular did not have tracheids ), although its conducting tissue is more complex than that of the Horneophytopsida. Partial cladogram by Crane, Herendeen & Friis 2004, with emphasis on horneophytes. Tortilicaulis Caia Horneophyton Aglaophyton Tracheophyta (See the Polysporangiophyte article for

1242-405: Is also remembered for strongly opposing theories of evolution, which at the time (before Darwin 's theory) were mainly proposed by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . Cuvier believed there was no evidence for evolution , but rather evidence for cyclical creations and destructions of life forms by global extinction events such as deluges . In 1830, Cuvier and Geoffroy engaged in

1311-454: Is known as the principle of the correlation of parts. He writes: This idea is referred to as Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts, which states that all organs in an animal's body are deeply interdependent. Species' existence relies on the way in which these organs interact. For example, a species whose digestive tract is best suited to digesting flesh but whose body is best suited to foraging for plants cannot survive. Thus in all species,

1380-521: Is to say a particular layout of organ systems. This said, the composition of each class is ultimately determined by the subjective judgment of taxonomists . In the first edition of his Systema Naturae (1735), Carl Linnaeus divided all three of his kingdoms of nature ( minerals , plants , and animals ) into classes. Only in the animal kingdom are Linnaeus's classes similar to the classes used today; his classes and orders of plants were never intended to represent natural groups, but rather to provide

1449-533: 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

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1518-679: 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 . 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, 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

1587-467: The Paris Basin named Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium based on fragmentary remains alone, although more complete remains were later uncovered. 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

1656-530: The Ptero-Dactyle in 1809, (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, the first known mosasaur . Cuvier speculated correctly that there had been a time when reptiles rather than mammals had been the dominant fauna. This speculation was confirmed over

1725-416: The rhyniophytes , but it was later found that some of the original members of the group had simple vascular tissue and others did not. The group has also been treated as the division Horneophyta . In 2004, Crane et al. published a cladogram for the polysporangiophytes in which the Horneophytopsida are shown as the sister group of all other polysporangiophytes. One other former rhyniophyte, Aglaophyton ,

1794-752: The Chair changed its name to Chair of Comparative Anatomy . 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

1863-581: The Reformation. His mother was Anne Clémence Chatel; his father, Jean-Georges Cuvier, was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guards and a bourgeois of the town of Montbéliard. At the time, the town, which would be annexed to France on 10 October 1793, belonged to the Duchy of Württemberg . His mother, who was much younger than his father, tutored him diligently throughout his early years, so he easily surpassed

1932-458: 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 relative, 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

2001-553: The age of 12, "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 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. Cuvier's German education exposed him to

2070-472: The animal unable to survive. In his Éloge de M. de Lamarck ( Praise for M. de Lamarck ), Cuvier wrote that Lamarck's theory of evolution rested on two arbitrary suppositions; the one, that it is the seminal vapour 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

2139-544: The arrival of human beings. Cuvier's early work demonstrated conclusively that extinction was indeed a credible natural global process. 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. Influence on Cuvier's theory of extinction

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2208-420: The classification of plants that appeared in his Eléments de botanique of 1694. Insofar as a general definition of a class is available, it has historically been conceived as embracing taxa that combine a distinct grade of organization—i.e. a 'level of complexity', measured in terms of how differentiated their organ systems are into distinct regions or sub-organs—with a distinct type of construction, which

2277-544: The classification. 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 proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events. In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in

2346-499: The continents existing ten millennia ago collapsed, allowing the ocean floors to rise higher than the continental plates and become the continents that now exist today. The latter proposed that a massive tsunami hit the globe, leading to mass extinction. Whatever the case was, he believed that the deluge happened quite recently in human history. In fact, he believed that Earth's existence was limited and not as extended as many natural scientists, like Lamarck , believed it to be. Much of

2415-478: The deep past that had been destroyed by catastrophe. 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: Contrary to many natural scientists' beliefs at the time, Cuvier believed that animal extinction was not a product of anthropogenic causes. Instead, he proposed that humans were around long enough to indirectly maintain

2484-622: The early 19th century. 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 North America belonged to an extinct animal he later would name as a " mastodon ", and that a large skeleton dug up in present-day Argentina was of a giant, prehistoric ground sloth , which he named Megatherium . He also established two ungulate genera from

2553-430: The evidence he used to support his catastrophist theories has been taken from his fossil records. He strongly suggested that the fossils he found were evidence of the world's first reptiles, followed chronologically by mammals and humans. Cuvier didn't wish to delve much into the causation of all the extinction and introduction of new animal species but rather focused on the sequential aspects of animal history on Earth. In

2622-471: The expanded cladogram.) Genera that have been placed in the horneophytes include: Other sources place only Horneophyton in this group, treating Caia and Tortilicaulis as actual or possible rhyniophytes . Class (biology) The class as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name – and not just called a top-level genus (genus summum) – was first introduced by French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in

2691-432: The fossilized records of ancient Earth. He also attempted to verify the water catastrophe by analyzing records of various cultural backgrounds. Though he found many accounts of the water catastrophe unclear, he did believe that such an event occurred at the brink of human history nonetheless. This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism , which maintained that many of

2760-455: The functional significance of each body part must be correlated to the others, or else the species cannot sustain itself. Cuvier believed that the power of his principle came in part from its ability to aid in the reconstruction of fossils. In most cases, fossils of quadrupeds were not found as complete, assembled skeletons, but rather as scattered pieces that needed to be put together by anatomists. To make matters worse, deposits often contained

2829-444: 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

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2898-407: 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

2967-406: 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 may judge what

3036-524: The idea that fossils came from those that are currently living. The idea that these bones belonged to elephants living – but hiding – somewhere on Earth seemed ridiculous to Cuvier, because it would be nearly impossible to miss them due to their enormous size. The Megatherium provided another compelling data point for this argument. Ultimately, his repeated identification of fossils as belonging to species unknown to man, combined with mineralogical evidence from his stratigraphical studies in Paris, drove Cuvier to

3105-531: 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. 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

3174-492: 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. Thereafter, Cuvier performed a pioneering research study on some elephant fossils excavated around Paris. The bones he studied, however, were remarkably different from the bones of elephants currently thriving in India and Africa. This discovery led Cuvier to denounce

3243-543: 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." 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. "Certainly", Cuvier wrote, "one cannot detect any greater difference between these creatures and those we see, than between

3312-457: The other children at school. 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. According to Lee, "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." At

3381-400: 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. Cuvier's own explanation for such a catastrophic event is derived from two different sources, including those from Jean-André Deluc and Déodat de Dolomieu . The former proposed that

3450-462: 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 . 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, which he named

3519-399: The proposition that the abrupt changes the Earth underwent over a long period of time caused some species to go extinct. Cuvier's theory on extinction has met opposition from other notable natural scientists like Darwin and Charles Lyell . Unlike Cuvier, they didn't believe that extinction was a sudden process; they believed that like the Earth, animals collectively undergo gradual change as

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3588-598: The ranks have been reduced to a very much lower level, e.g. class Equisitopsida for the land plants, with the major divisions within the class assigned to subclasses and superorders. The class was considered the highest level of the taxonomic hierarchy until George Cuvier 's embranchements , first called Phyla by Ernst Haeckel , were introduced in the early nineteenth century. George Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier ( / ˈ k j uː v i eɪ / ; French: [ʒɔʁʒ(ə) kyvje] ),

3657-675: 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. Early in his tenure at the National Museum in Paris, Cuvier published studies of fossil bones in which he argued that they belonged to large, extinct quadrupeds. His first two such publications were those identifying mammoth and mastodon fossils as belonging to extinct species rather than modern elephants and

3726-493: 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,

3795-513: The study in which he identified the Megatherium as a giant, extinct species of sloth. His primary evidence for his identifications of mammoths and mastodons as separate, extinct species was the structure of their jaws and teeth. His primary evidence that the Megatherium fossil had belonged to a massive sloth came from his comparison of its skull with those of extant sloth species. Cuvier wrote of his paleontological method that "the form of

3864-438: The surface of the globe ). 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

3933-404: The thoughtful professor of the laws of organic economy can reconstruct the entire animal." However, Cuvier's actual method was heavily dependent on the comparison of fossil specimens with the anatomy of extant species in the necessary context of his vast knowledge of animal anatomy and access to unparalleled natural history collections in Paris. This reality, however, did not prevent the rise of

4002-456: The tooth leads to the form of the condyle , that of the scapula to that of the nails, just as an equation of a curve implies all of its properties; and, just as in taking each property separately as the basis of a special equation we are able to return to the original equation and other associated properties, similarly, the nails, the scapula, the condyle, the femur, each separately reveal the tooth or each other; and by beginning from each of them

4071-403: 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 . In a 1798 paper on the fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris, Cuvier states what

4140-566: The word "dinosaur" would be coined by Richard Owen in 1842. During his lifetime, Cuvier served as an imperial councillor 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

4209-481: The work of the geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750–1817), whose Neptunism and emphasis on the importance of rigorous, direct observation of three-dimensional, structural relationships of rock formations to geological understanding provided models for Cuvier's scientific theories and methods. Upon graduation, he had no money on which to live as he awaited an appointment to an academic office. So in July 1788, he took

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4278-538: Was a French naturalist and zoologist , sometimes referred to as the "founding 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

4347-747: 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". 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

4416-538: 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. Cuvier was by birth, education, and conviction a devout Lutheran , 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

4485-582: 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

4554-645: 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 the United States, and Richard Owen in Britain. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower . Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier was born in Montbéliard , where his Protestant ancestors had lived since the time of

4623-470: Was often placid for extended periods of time in between sudden disturbances. 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 published a revised version under the name, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe ( Discourse on the upheavals of

4692-415: 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. 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". The harshness of his criticism and

4761-774: Was very active in founding the Parisian Biblical Society in 1818, where he later served as a vice president. From 1822 until his death in 1832, Cuvier was Grand Master of the Protestant Faculties of Theology of the French University. Cuvier was critical of theories of evolution, in particular those 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

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