Cuvier, Georges (Léopold Chrêtien Frédéric Dagobert) (1769–1832)

French comparative anatomist, the founder of palaeontology. In 1799 he showed that some species have become extinct by reconstructing extinct giant animals that he believed were destroyed in a series of giant deluges. These ideas are expressed in Recherches sur les ossiments fossiles de quadrupèdes/Researches on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds (1812) and Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe/Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe (1825).

In 1798 Cuvier produced Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux, in which his scheme of classification is outlined. He was the first to relate the structure of fossil animals to that of their living relatives. His great work Le Règne animal/The Animal Kingdom (1817) is a systematic survey.

Cuvier was born at Montebéliard in the principality of Württemburg, and studied natural history at Stuttgart, before becoming a private tutor in Normandy. He held academic posts in Paris from 1795, becoming professor at the Collège de France 1799 and at the Jardin des Plantes from 1802.