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In 1808, Napoleon I, Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815, commissioned a series of official reports on the progress of scientific research since 1789. First published in 1810, this report on the current state of science was written by French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). One of the first scientists to establish the fields of comparative anatomy and palaeontology, Cuvier became permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences in 1803. As such, he was charged with examining the state of science in higher educational establishments, and with presenting an overview of the progress accomplished during Napoleon's reign in the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, geology, and medicine. This report includes discoveries made by French scientists, such as the chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94), as well as those made in the countries then under French occupation.

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French zoologist and naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) laid the foundations of comparative anatomy and palaeontology. He spent his lifetime studying the anatomy of animals, and broke new ground by comparing living and fossil specimens. However, Cuvier always opposed evolutionary theories and was during his day the foremost proponent of catastrophism, a doctrine contending that geological changes were caused by sudden cataclysms. He received universal acclaim when he published his monumental Le règne animal, which made significant advances over the Linnaean taxonomic system of classification and arranged animals into four large groups. The sixteen-volume English translation and expansion, The Animal Kingdom (1827-35), is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. First published in 1817, Volume 4 of the original version covers zoophytes and concludes with plates.

Zoology. --- Animals --- Classification.

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Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the founding figures of vertebrate palaeontology, pursued a successful scientific career despite the political upheavals in France during his lifetime. In the 1790s, Cuvier's work on fossils of large mammals including mammoths enabled him to show that extinction was a scientific fact. In 1812 Cuvier published this four-volume illustrated collection of his papers on palaeontology, osteology (notably dentition) and stratigraphy. It was followed in 1817 by his famous Le règne animal, available in the Cambridge Library Collection both in French and in Edward Griffith's expanded English translation (1827-35). Volume 4 of Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles focuses first on ruminants, horses and pigs. Cuvier then discusses fossils of carnivores, including bears, hyenas and big cats. The book concludes by describing fossil sloths, and the oviparous reptiles found in older strata, such as crocodiles, turtles, and marine dinosaurs.

Vertebrates, Fossil.

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