Paris, France/parisG050
Previous | Home | Next"Under the patronage of Louix XIII, the physician Guy de la Brosse founded in 1633 the garden of medicinal plants, open to the public in 1645. During the 17th and 18th centuries, it has sponsored anatomy, biology, and chemistry studies. Buffon, curator 1739-1788, extended the garden to the Seine, and Verniquet built a gazebo in 1788 at the summit of the Labyrinth. In 1793 Bernadin de Saint-Pierre opened the menagerie [from the animals taken from Versaille upon confiscation by the Revolution] and Lakanal created the Museum of Natural History, provided with twelve chairs such as Cuvier , Lacépède, Lamarck. . . . "
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was a famous naturalist and zoologist and helped develop comparative anatomy by comparing living animals with fossils. Cuvier proved that extinction of animals was a fact.
Bernard Germain de Lacépède (1756-1825) was a naturalist concentrating in reptiles and fishes.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was a naturalist, perhaps the first to propose natural evolution (although believing in the "inheritance of acquired characters," e.g., a giraffe's long neck developing from the animal stretching his neck to reach high branches). He was the first to distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates, and made a modern organization of animal species.
