Georges-Léopold-Chrétien-Frédéric-Dagobert, Baron | Biography

Although Cuvier was trained as an anatomist, his contribution to the science of biology and the organization of plants and animals was so substantial that he is known today as the founder of comparative anatomy and paleontology. Cuvier was born in 1769 at Montbeliard, France, and studied theology as well as dissection and anatomy in Stuttgart, Germany. Upon completing his studies, Cuvier was awarded an assistant professorship in comparative anatomy at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Later he held a professorship at the Collège de France and the chancellorship of the University of Paris.

Throughout his academic career, Cuvier conducted zoological research; in 1805, he published his first work, Lessons in Comparative Anatomy. After Cuvier discovered the fossil of a pterodactyl, which he named, he assembled a vast collection of animal fossils for research and study. As he continued his search, he realized that those fossils buried in successively deeper layers of the Earth's crust were unrecognizable from existing animals. These baffling discoveries pointed him toward basic evolutionary theory.

In the early nineteenth century, evolutionary ideas had been formulated by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Although Lamarck had never used the word evolution, in 1809 he proposed an explanation describing differences and similarities among all living things. He used the term transmutation, theorizing that species are not unalterable and that the more complex ones have developed unique features from more simplistic forms of life. For example, he explained that by stretching, giraffes eventually developed long necks because they needed to reach ever higher leaves for nourishment. Lamarck's ideas inspired many other early evolutionists who held to the notion that there was a common plan, or a connectivity among animals, that manifested itself in their similarities.

Cuvier rejected Lamarck's principles, however, adhering to the theory of catastrophism, which had been locked in scientific tradition since 1654, when Archbishop Ussher calculated that the world had been created at exactly 9 a.m. on October 26, 4004 b.c. Catastrophism became the common scientific explanation for the extinction of certain species--for example, the biblical account of The Flood--despite growing geological evidence that demonstrated that a great disaster like Noah's flood was incompatible with tenable data. Nevertheless, Cuvier explained the chronological sequence of his fossils from the catastrophist vantage point, further refining the theory. He maintained, for example, that cataclysms altering the earth's surface could be responsible for the fossils of freshwater and saltwater organisms existing in the same location, for creatures from other areas could recolonize a disrupted area. Cuvier rejected out of hand the idea that species might have evolved through transmutation. According to Cuvier, once an animal had been created, it was not subject to mutation.

Taxonomy, the science of classifying animals and plants, has been practiced since Aristotle devised the first system over 2,000 years ago. Because only about 1,000 species were then known, Aristotle grouped them into simple categories of animals with and without vertebrae. Aristotle's system was finally replaced in the late 1700s by a much more comprehensive and systematic method developed by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. The Linnaen system has remained intact except for one important modification. In the early 1800s, Cuvier contributed a fourth category based on his research in anatomy and fossilized evidence. He identified four major groups called phyla within the animal kingdom. These included mollusca (such as snails and cuttlefish), radiata (with starfish and jellyfish), articulata (with worms and insects), and vertebrata, which acknowledged all the higher animals. Cuvier interpreted his vast body of fossilized evidence in the book The Animal Kingdom, Distributed According to Its Organization (1817). There he proposed his correlation of parts theory, in which the anatomy and organs of an animal work in concert to adapt that animal to its environment.

Cuvier died of cholera in 1837, well before evolutionary theory gained acceptance due to Charles Darwin's research. Yet Cuvier's contributions to anatomy and paleontology inevitably helped Darwin shape many of his own theories.