26 | Great Geologists
are the remains of extinct creatures; the use of comparative
anatomy to resolve the form of complete creatures from their
fragmentary fossil remains; the exposition of the value of fossils
in stratigraphic classification and correlation; and pioneering
attempts to interpret stratigraphic successions as a history of
changing paleoenvironments.
In 1812 he wrote “We admire the power by which the human
mind has measured the movements of the globes, which
nature seemed to have concealed forever from our view; genius
and science have burst the limits of space, the observations
interpreted by reason have unveiled the mechanism of the world.
Would there not also be some glory for man to know how to
burst the limits of time and, by observations, to recover the
history of this world and the succession of events that preceded
mankind’s birth?” This was a rallying call for geology to match
the achievements of physics and astronomy, but in particular,
to the purpose of stratigraphy and Cuvier was amongst the first
to imagine a succession of past worlds, populated by mostly
extinct organisms. These achievements stand alongside the
colossal work he carried out in the comparative anatomy and
classification of living creatures, which mark him out as one of
the greats of biology and of science in general.
Georges Cuvier. Painted by W.H. Pickersgill, 1831.
Engraved by George T. Doo, 1840.
Baron Georges
Cuvier
One of the finest minds of the Age of Enlightenment was
that of Georges Cuvier, yet he is often portrayed negatively in
histories of geoscience because of his opposition to evolution
and his promotion of a history of the Earth often described as
Catastrophism. Notwithstanding the rights and wrongs of such
judgments, they belittle the massive contributions he made
to the emerging science of geology in the early 19th century.
These included: the recognition that the vast majority of fossils
The son of a military man, Cuvier was born in 1769 in the town
of Montbéliard, now in eastern France. He studied in Stuttgart,
where he became interested in entomology, botany and
zoological classification. In 1788 he moved to Caen in Normandy,
where he was employed as a teacher to an aristocratic family.
The work was not arduous, so he expanded his scientific
interests to the description of marine animals, molluscs and
arthropods. His location in rural Normandy was, perhaps,
fortunate as he was not drawn into the French Revolution
of 1789 and continued his work as a naturalist of increasing
reputation, such that by 1795 he was invited to Paris and became
a teacher of natural history at one of the new Écoles Centrales.
He progressed rapidly through French scientific society. At the
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, he created a stunning gallery
devoted to the animal world. With over 16,000 zoological
specimens organised by zoological class and illustrating the
relationship between form and function, this gallery became one
of the scientific sensations of the early 19th century.
Having examined, dissected and drawn almost every known
living animal, in 1817 he published an inventory of the animal
kingdom and a classification based on the functional morphology
of each creatures’ bones and organs. This four volume work was
entitled Règne Animal Distribué d’après son Organisation — a
second edition was published in 1829-30 in five volumes. This is
undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of zoological science.