Alcide d'Orbigny
Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (
September 6,
1802 -
June 30,
1857) was a great
French naturalist. He made major contributions in many areas, including
zoology,
malacology,
palaeontology,
geology,
archaeology and
anthropology.
D'Orbigny was born in
Couëron (
Loire-Atlantique), the son of a ship's physician and amateur naturalist. The family moved to
La Rochelle in
1820, where his interest for natural history was raised, while studying the marine fauna and especially microscopic creatures, that he named "
foraminiferans".
In
Paris he became a disciple of the geologist
L.-A. Cordier (1777-1861) and
Georges Cuvier. All his life, he would follow the theory of Cuvier and stay opposed to
Lamarckism.
D'Orbigny travelled, on a mission for the Paris Museum, in
South America between
1826 and
1833. He visited
Brazil,
Argentina,
Paraguay,
Chile,
Bolivia and
Peru. He returned to France with an enormous collection of more than 10,000 natural history specimens. He described part of his findings in
La Relation du Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale. His contemporary,
Charles Darwin called this book "one of the great monuments of science in the 19th century". The other specimens were described by zoologists at the museum.
|
On the shore of Rio Magdalen. Image from the book : "Voyages pittoresque dans les deux Amériques" |
In
1840, d'Orbigny started the methodical description of French fossils and published
La Paléontologie Française (8 vols).
In
1849 he published another major work,
Prodrome de Paléontologie Stratigraphique. In this book he described almost 18,000 species.
In
1853 he became professor of palaeontology at the Paris
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. The chair of paleontology was created especially in his honor.
He described as first the geological timescales. He defined numerous geological strata, still used today as
chronostratigraphic reference such as Toarcian, Callovian, Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian,
Aptian,
Albian and
Cenomanian.
He died in the small town of
Pierrefitte-sur-Seine.
The following genera and species were named in his honor :
*
Nerocila orbignyi (Guérin, 1832)
*
Alcidia Bourguignat, 1889
*
Ampullaria dorbignyana Philippi, 1851
*
Pinna dorbignyi Hanley, 1858
*
Haminoea orbignyana A. de Férussac, 1822
*
Pink Cuttlefish,
Sepia orbignyana Férussac, 1826
