One day in 1795, a resident of Maastricht, the Dutchman Hoffman, was excavating in the vicinity of the city and found some giant bones. He sketched them and sent the drawings and individual teeth to Cuvier's Paris. Hoffman assumed that these were the remains of a whale skeleton. Some scientists who saw the bones thought they were the remains of a crocodile. And the canon of the city cathedral claimed that it was the skeleton of a saint, the heavenly patron of the city of Maastricht. On this basis, the canon took the find from Hoffman and transferred it, like a shrine, to the cathedral. Cuvier then spoke out against all these judgments. But for the final decision what it is, he considered it necessary to study the entire skeleton.

And before Cuvier, people paid attention to rare finds of animal fossils. Most scientists considered them curiosities, "play of nature" bones of fabulous giants or ancient saints. Cuvier not only collected a large number of such finds, but also brought them into a system and described them. He developed scientific method, which made it possible to study fossils) of animals with the same accuracy with which living animals are studied. He is rightfully considered the founder of paleontology - the science of the fossil remains of organisms that lived on Earth in past eras and have long since died out.

Having received a parcel from Maastricht, Cuvier assembled an almost complete skeleton from the bones and made sure that these were the bones of a huge reptile. The spine of the animal had more than 130 vertebrae. The length of the lizard reached fifteen meters, of which more than two meters per head, and about seven meters per tail. Its huge mouth was armed with long sharp teeth, which made it possible to firmly hold the captured prey. This animal was called a mesosaurus: “sauros” in Greek is a reptile, a lizard, and the first part of the word “mozo” was supposed to remind that the find was made in the Meuse river basin (in French pronunciation - “Meuse”). This mososaurus during its lifetime was a marine predator that attacked fish, mollusks and other animals of the sea. Cuvier drew attention to the fact that many remains of sea shells, crustaceans, fossilized corals, bones and teeth were found along with the bones of the mesosaurus.
extinct marine fish. All these animals once inhabited the waters of the warm sea, which stretched on the site of modern Holland.

Thus Cuvier solved a question in which other scientists were helpless. Mesosaurus Cuvier studied at the beginning of his scientific career.

Subsequently, he more than once had to solve the same mysteries of nature.

Georges Leopold Christian Dagobert Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769 in the small Alsatian town of Montbéliard Cuvier's father was an old officer in the French army and lived in retirement. The mother devoted herself entirely to the care of the sickly and frail child, as Cuvier had been in childhood. He hit early mental development. At the age of four he was already reading; his mother taught him to draw, and Cuvier thoroughly mastered this art.
Subsequently, many of the drawings made by him were published in his books and reprinted many times in the books of other authors. Reading became Cuvier's favorite pastime and later passion. His favorite book was Buffon's Natural History; Cuvier constantly redrawn and colored illustrations from it.

At school, he studied brilliantly, but was not known as the most well-behaved student. Cuvier was “punished” for joking with the director of the gymnasium: he did not get into the theological school that trained priests.

At the age of fifteen, Cuvier entered the Karolinska Academy in Stuttgart, where he chose the Faculty of Cameral Sciences. Here he studied law, finance, hygiene and Agriculture. He was still most attracted to the study of animals and plants. Almost all of his comrades were older than him. Among them were several young people interested in biology. Cuvier organized a circle and called it an "academy".
The members of the circle gathered on Thursdays, read, made reports about what they had read, talked about their own observations, identified the collected insects and plants. Cuvier was elected president of this "academy". For successful reports, he rewarded members of the circle with a medal cut out of cardboard, which depicted a bust of Linnaeus.

Four years flew by quickly. Cuvier graduated from the university and returned home. The parents were old, the father's pension was barely enough to make ends meet. Cuvier found out what Count Erisi was looking for for his son. Home teacher. Cuvier traveled to Normandy in 1788, just before the French Revolution. There, in a secluded castle, he spent the most turbulent years in the history of France.

The estate of Count Erisi was located on the seashore, and for the first time Cuvier saw real sea animals, familiar to him only from drawings. He dissected these animals and studied internal structure fish, soft-bodied crabs, starfish, worms. He found with amazement that in the so-called lower forms, in which the scientists of his time assumed a simple structure of the body, there is an intestine with glands, and a heart with
vessels, and nerve nodes with nerve trunks extending from them. Cuvier
penetrated with his scalpel new world, in which no one has yet made accurate and thorough observations. He described the results of the research in detail in the journal Zoological Bulletin.

Even as a child, his mother instilled in him a love for a strict routine of life, taught him how to use time, work systematically and persistently. These character traits, along with exceptional memory, observation, love for accuracy, played a big role in his scientific activity.

Acquainted with the Abbé Tessier, Cuvier, at his request, read a course in botany at the hospital, which he was in charge of. Thanks to the connections of the abbot with Parisian scientists, Cuvier struck up relationships with the most prominent naturalists.

When in 1794 the son of Count Erisi entered his twentieth year, Cuvier's service ended, and he again found himself at a crossroads. Parisian scientists invited Cuvier to work in the newly organized Museum of Natural History.

In the spring of 1795, Cuvier arrived in Paris. He advanced very quickly and in the same year took the chair of animal anatomy at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In 1796, Cuvier was appointed a member of the national institute, in 1800 he took the chair of natural history at the College de France. In 1802 he took the chair of comparative
anatomy at the Sorbonne.

The first scientific works of Cuvier were devoted to entomology. In Paris, studying the rich collections of the museum, Cuvier gradually became convinced that the Linnaean system adopted in science did not strictly correspond to reality. Linnaeus divided the animal world into 6 classes: mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and worms. Cuvier proposed a different system.

He believed that in the animal world there are four types of body structure, completely dissimilar to each other. Animals of one type are dressed in a hard shell, and their body consists of many segments; such are crayfish, insects, centipedes, some worms. Cuvier called such animals "segmented". In another type, the soft body of the animal is enclosed in a hard shell and they have no signs of articulation: snails, octopuses, oysters - Cuvier called these animals “soft-bodied”. Animals of the third type have a dissected internal bone skeleton - "vertebrate" animals. Animals of the fourth type are built in the same way as a starfish, that is, the parts of their body are located along radii diverging from one center. Cuvier called these animals "radiant".

Within each type, Cuvier distinguished classes; some of them coincide with the Linnaean classes. So, for example, the type of vertebrates was divided into classes of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish. Cuvier's system was much better at expressing the actual relationships between groups of animals than Linnaeus's. It soon came into general use among zoologists. Cuvier put his system in the basis of the capital three-volume work "The Animal Kingdom", where the anatomical structure of animals was described in detail.

Deep knowledge of animal anatomy allowed Cuvier to restore the appearance of extinct creatures from their preserved bones. Cuvier became convinced that all the organs of an animal are closely connected with each other, that each organ is necessary for the life of the whole organism. Each animal is adapted to the environment in which it lives, finds food, hides from enemies, takes care of its offspring. If this animal is a herbivore, its front teeth are adapted to pluck grass, and its molars are to grind it. Massive teeth grinding grass require large and powerful jaws and corresponding chewing muscles. Therefore, such an animal must have a heavy, large head, and since it has neither sharp claws nor long fangs to fend off a predator, it fights off with its horns. To support a heavy head and horns, a strong neck and large cervical vertebrae with long processes to which muscles are attached are needed. To digest a large amount of low-nutrient grass, a bulky stomach and a long intestine are required, and therefore a large belly is needed, wide ribs are needed. This is how the appearance of a herbivorous mammal looms.

“The organism,” said Cuvier, “is a coherent whole. Parts of it cannot be changed without causing others to change. Cuvier called this constant connection of organs among themselves "the ratio of the parts of the body."

The extent to which Cuvier was imbued with the consciousness of the constant connection of the parts of the animal's body is evident from the following anecdote. One of his students wanted to play a joke on him. He dressed up in the skin of a wild ram, entered Cuvier's bedroom at night and, standing near his bed, shouted in a wild voice: "Cuvier, Cuvier, I'll eat you!" The great naturalist woke up, stretched out his hand, felt for the horns, and, examining the hooves in the semi-darkness, calmly
answered: “Hooves, horns - herbivore; you can't eat me!"

By studying fossils, Cuvier restored the appearance of many extinct animals that lived millions of years ago. He proved that once on the site of Europe there was a warm sea, along which huge predators swam - ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, etc. They, like the mososaurus, were lizards and adapted to life in the sea.

Cuvier proved that in those days reptiles dominated the air, but there were no birds yet. Some winged lizards had a wingspan of up to seven meters, others were the size of a sparrow. There were no feathers on the wing of the flying pangolin; it was a leathery membrane stretched between the animal's body and a very elongated
little finger of his forelimb. Cuvier called these fossil dragons pterodactyls, that is, "finger-winged." Pterodactyls were also predators and hunted fish. They caught them with their mouths armed with recurved teeth.

Having studied other fossils, Cuvier became convinced that in the past there was an era with a peculiar animal world in which not a single modern animal existed. All the animals that lived then died out. This fossil fauna of land animals, mainly mammals, was discovered near Paris in gypsum quarries and in limestone strata. rock- marl.

Cuvier discovered and described about forty extinct breeds of large mammals - pachyderms and ruminants. Some of them remotely resembled modern rhinos, tapirs, wild boars; others were quite idiosyncratic. But among them there were no ruminants living in our time - no bulls, no camels, no deer, no giraffes.

Continuing his research, Cuvier discovered that fossil faunas are found in the layers of the earth's crust in a certain order. The older layers contain the remains of marine fish and reptiles; in the later deposits of the Cretaceous, other reptiles and the first small and rare mammals with a very primitive skull structure; in even later ones, the fauna of ancient mammals and birds. Finally, in pre-modern deposits, Cuvier discovered
the remains of a mammoth, cave bear, woolly rhinoceros. Thus, the relative sequence and antiquity of strata can be determined from fossil remains, and the relative antiquity of extinct faunas can be determined from strata. This discovery formed the basis of historical geology and stratigraphy - the study of the sequence of strata that make up the earth's crust.

Where did the faunas that we now find in the form of fossils disappear to, and where did the new ones come from to replace them? modern science explains this by the evolutionary development of the animal world. The facts discovered by Cuvier formed the basis of such an explanation. But Cuvier himself did not see the enormous significance of his discoveries. He stood firm on the old point of view of the permanence of species. Cuvier believed that among the fossils there are no transitional forms of animal organisms. (Such forms were discovered only many years after Cuvier's death.) He pointed to the sudden disappearance of faunas and the lack of communication between them. To explain the succession of fossil animals.

Cuvier came up with a special theory of "upheavals" or "catastrophes" in the history of the Earth. He explained these catastrophes as follows: the sea was advancing on land and swallowing up all life, then the sea receded, the seabed became dry land, which was populated by new animals. Where did they come from? Cuvier did not give a clear answer to this. He said that new animals could have migrated from distant places where they lived before. In essence, it was a reactionary theory that tried to reconcile scientific discoveries with the religious doctrine of the immutability and constancy of species. The theory of "catastrophes" dominated science for a long time, and only the evolutionary teaching of Darwin refuted it.

Cuvier paved new paths of research in biology and created new areas of knowledge - paleontology and comparative anatomy of animals. Thus the triumph of the evolutionary doctrine was prepared. It appeared in science after Cuvier's death and contrary to his worldview. Cuvier, like everyone else, made mistakes. But it would hardly be fair because of mistakes to forget about his greatest merits. If Cuvier's works are to be impartially evaluated, then their enormous scientific significance should be recognized: he advanced several vast areas of the science of life far ahead.

The merits of the scientist were noted at home: he was elected a member of the French Academy, under Louis-Philippe he became a peer of France.

Cuvier died in 1832.

Georges Leopold Christian Dagobert Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769 in the Alsatian town of Montbéliard. Cuvier's father was an old officer in the French army and lived in retirement.

At first, Cuvier studied at school, then at the age of fifteen he entered the Karolinska Academy in Stuttgart, where he chose the Faculty of Cameral Sciences. Here he studied law, finance, hygiene and agriculture. Four years later, Cuvier graduated from the university and returned home. In 1788, Cuvier left for Normandy on the estate of Count Erisi, where he became his son's house teacher. The estate was on the seashore, and Cuvier saw marine animals for the first time. He studied the internal structure of fish, crabs, soft-bodied, starfish, and worms. He described the results of the research in detail in the journal "Zoological Bulletin".

When Cuvier's service ended in 1794. Parisian scientists invited Cuvier to work in the newly organized Museum of Natural History.

In the spring of 1795, Cuvier arrived in Paris. In the same year, he took the chair of animal anatomy at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

In 1796, Cuvier was appointed a member of the national institute, in 1800 he took the chair of natural history at the College de France. In 1802 he took the chair of comparative anatomy at the Sorbonne.

The first scientific works of Cuvier were devoted to entomology. Cuvier became convinced that the adopted system of Linnaeus did not strictly correspond to reality. Cuvier believed that in the animal world there are four types of body structure, completely dissimilar to each other. Animals of one type are dressed in a hard shell, and their body consists of many segments. Cuvier called such animals "segmented". In another type, the soft body of the animal is enclosed in a hard shell and they have no signs of articulation: snails, octopuses, oysters - Cuvier called these animals "soft-bodied". Animals of the third type have a dissected internal bone skeleton - these are "vertebral" animals. Animals of the fourth type are built in the same way as a starfish, that is, the parts of their body are located along radii diverging from one center. Cuvier called these animals "radiant".

Within each type, Cuvier distinguished classes; some of them coincided with the Linnaean classes. So, for example, the type of vertebrates was divided into classes of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish. Cuvier put his system in the basis of the capital three-volume work "The Animal Kingdom", where the anatomical structure of animals was described in detail.

Cuvier became convinced that all the organs of an animal are closely connected with each other, that each organ is necessary for the life of the whole organism. Each animal is adapted to the environment in which it lives, finds food, hides from enemies, takes care of its offspring. By studying fossils, Cuvier restored the appearance of many extinct animals. He proved that once on the site of Europe there was a warm sea, along which huge predators swam - ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, etc. And reptiles dominated the air. The wing of a flying pangolin was a leathery membrane stretched between the body of the animal and the very elongated little finger of its forelimb. Cuvier called them pterodactyls, that is, "finger-winged". Cuvier became convinced that in the past there was an era with a peculiar animal world in which not a single modern animal existed. All the animals that lived then died out. Cuvier discovered and described about forty extinct breeds of large mammals - pachyderms and ruminants. Cuvier discovered that fossil faunas are found in the layers of the earth's crust in a certain order. The older layers contain the remains of marine fish and reptiles; in later ones, other reptiles and the first small and rare mammals with a very primitive skull structure; in even later ones - the fauna of ancient mammals and birds. In the deposits preceding modern ones, Cuvier discovered the remains of a mammoth, a cave bear, and a woolly rhinoceros. Despite his own discoveries, Cuvier maintained the old view of the permanence of species. He pointed to the sudden disappearance of faunas and the lack of communication between them. To explain the successive change of fossil animals, Cuvier came up with a special theory of "revolutions" or "catastrophes" in the history of the Earth.

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Born in the family of an officer, he was the younger brother of Frederic Cuvier (also a future zoologist). At the age of 15, he graduated from school as the first student. He entered the Carolingian Academy in Stuttgart, from which he graduated in 1788. Upon graduation, he was invited as a tutor to Count d'Ericy, whose castle was located in coastal Normandy. Taking advantage of the proximity of the sea, Cuvier became interested in observing marine animals: first, soft-bodied (mainly worms and mollusks), then for vertebrates (in particular, fish).

Later, this experience helped Cuvier create the basis of scientific comparative anatomy, which was considered an auxiliary discipline of medicine. The great merit of the scientist was the separation of anatomy into an independent scientific branch, dealing primarily with the classification of existing and extinct organisms. In 1692 he published his first scientific work"The Anatomy of a Soft-Body Patell".

In 1795 he moved to Paris, where he took up the post of adjunct at the Museum of Natural History, then as a professor at the College de France, from 1796 he taught at the Central School of the Panthéon, from 1802 he served as inspector general of French secondary schools. educational institutions. Cuvier had a reputation as an independent citizen and scholar.

Taking up the taxonomy of animals, Cuvier laid the foundation for the principle of their structure. The defining feature was the nervous system. He divided the animal kingdom into four classes, which corresponded to four separate "building plans": mammals, birds, amphibians and fish, the rest of the types are articulated. Regardless of this classification, anatomically comparative studies were based on the correlation of the structure and activity of individual organs and parts of the body, according to which it was possible to judge the whole organism from a certain part of the body. Cuvier began to restore the skeletons of fossil animals from their remains.

Thus, he became one of the founders of modern comparative anatomy and paleontology. The scientist described more than 160 species of extinct animals, of which no one had described more than 60 before him. At the same time, Cuvier was hostile to the evolutionary idea. He was a staunch supporter of the idea of ​​the immutability of species and the creator of a theory that came to be called the catastrophe theory. Cuvier argued that over the past million years, the Earth has experienced huge geological catastrophes, during which all forms of life in water, on land and in the air were destroyed. Therefore, after each such catastrophe, a completely new world was created.

Cuvier believed that everything that exists on Earth was created by higher forces as an act of manifestation of the will of supernatural forces. Cuvier's theory is not much different from the theory of C. Linnaeus. But unlike Linnaeus, Cuvier believed that the world was recreated repeatedly after geological catastrophes. Cuvier's views were completely refuted

Cuvier was a follower of Carl Linnaeus and rejected the evolutionary views of J. Lamarck and E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Cuvier died in Paris on May 13, 1832.

It is with the name of Georges Cuvier, who continued the pioneering work of Robert Hooke, that the creation of vertebrate paleontology is associated. Using data from comparative anatomy, Cuvier studied many groups of fossil vertebrates. Under his leadership, the largest excavations of the sites of extinct mammals in the vicinity of Paris were carried out at that time, he collected the richest collections of extinct forms.

J. Cuvier, carefully studying the fossil fauna of Europe, came to the denial of a direct connection between faunistic groups of successively occurring formations. In his famous book "Discourse on the revolutions of the surface of the globe", published in 1830, Cuvier, as if summing up his many years of research on fossil organisms, came to the conclusion that many groups of animals had repeatedly migrated in the past. Not seeing examples of the gradual transition of some species in others, as the successive layers of the earth's crust in one area were considered, the French scientist believed that the layers more distant in time contain the remains of many genera that do not exist now, and the "younger" layers contain the bones of extinct animal species. However, he did not claim that in order to create modern species a new creation was necessary, but assumed that the new forms did not exist before in those places where they are now observed, but moved there from other places. Cuvier supported his reasoning with examples. If the sea flooded modern Australia, he said, then the whole variety of marsupials and monotremes would be buried under sediments and all species of these animals would be completely extinct. If a new catastrophe would connect the lands of Australia and Asia, then animals from Asia could move to Australia. Finally, if a new catastrophe were to destroy Asia, the homeland of the animals that migrated to Australia, then it would be difficult to establish by studying the animals of Australia where they came from. Thus, Cuvier, relying only on the facts that European geology and paleontology gave him, was forced to admit the existence of catastrophes in the history of the Earth, however, according to his ideas, they did not destroy the entire organic world at the same time.

From what has been said, it is clear that the brilliant comparative anatomist and paleontologist Cuvier was not at all a supporter of the vulgar theory of total catastrophes that completely destroyed all life on Earth, and did not recognize multiple acts of creation. Rather, J. Cuvier can rightly be called the creator of the theory of fauna migrations of the past. Cuvier's great practical experience and intuition did not allow him to become a supporter of transformism, that is, the theory of gradual, continuous transformation of organisms.

This explains his sharp speech against the supporter of the idea of ​​the gradual transformation of living nature, Geoffroy Saint-Iller, who could not confirm his views with accurate factual material.

The followers of Cuvier - the largest American paleontologist L. Agassiz and the French geologist A. D "Orbigny overdeveloped just the "catastrophic" part of the ideas of their great predecessor and actually created the theory of catastrophes, with its inevitable multiple acts of creation. These ideas dominated the paleontology of the first half of XIX in. Therefore, the old-school paleontologists for the most part did not accept Darwin's theory.

In fact, given the state of paleontological science in which it was at that time, it was difficult to expect a different attitude towards evolutionary ideas.

Paleontology developed primarily as a descriptive discipline, serving the needs of a rapidly evolving geology. The overwhelming majority of paleontologists did not study the fossil material in depth, limiting themselves to describing new forms. And the far from complete sections of geological strata in Europe rather gave an idea of ​​the discontinuity in the development of fossil forms and the sharp limitation of their host formations.

The timid attempts of a few paleontologists to embark on the path of transformation did not change the general picture of the situation in paleontology. The publication of the famous book by Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" caused a number of objections and criticisms of the theory of evolution from many prominent paleontologists. his book "Study on Classification". In it, he argued that all systematic units of animals and plants, from species to types, have a real justification in nature, since they were created by the divine mind. In 1869

Ten years after the publication of Darwin's theory, L. Agassiz published his book in France, supplementing it with a special chapter in which he criticized Darwinism. He characterized the doctrine of evolution as "contrary to the true methods of natural history and dangerous, even fatal for the development of this science.

The famous paleontologist and comparative anatomist Richard Owen also criticized Darwin's theory. Although Owen himself, even before the publication of The Origin of Species, expressed an opinion about the possibility of continuity in the development of wildlife, his judgments were very vague and inconsistent. In the last book of his major work, Anatomy of Vertebrates, R. Owen tried to substantiate a special law secondary cause", which produced different kinds in strict sequence and complication. As an example, the famous paleontologist considered a number of ancestors of the horse, starting from the Eocene paleotherium, through the hipparion to modern horses.

Based on fragmentary geological data, Owen denied the possibility of explaining the successive appearance of forms from ancestor to descendant from the standpoint of Darwin's theory. According to him, geological data showed that the changes were sudden and significant , independent of external conditions and not subject to the factors of natural selection. Owen preached the presence of a certain internal tendency in organisms to evade the parental type, which he called the “law of secondary reason.” In this regard, R. Owen approached the views of Lamarck, who put forward an internal principle of improvement to explain evolution.

Catastrophe theory J. Cuvier

Much more popular at the beginning of the 19th century. the views of Lamarck's compatriot Georges Leopold Cuvier were used. While Lamarck was thinking about the reasons for the expediency of living organisms, Cuvier chose this expediency as the main instrument of research.

Cuvier's methodology was based on great successes in such areas biological science as comparative anatomy and paleontology. He systematically compared the structure and functions of the same organ or an entire system of organs through all sections of the animal kingdom. Investigating the structure of the organs of vertebrates, he found that all organs are parts of a single integral system. As a result, the structure of each organ naturally correlates with the structure of all others. No part of the body can change without a corresponding change in other parts. This means that each part of the body reflects the principles of the structure of the whole organism.

Thus, herbivorous animals that eat low-nutrient plant foods must necessarily have a large stomach capable of digesting this food in large quantities. The size of the stomach determines the size of other internal organs: the spine, chest. The massive body must be supported on powerful legs, equipped with hard hooves, and the length of the legs determines the length of the neck, which makes it possible to freely pluck the grass.

Predators have more nutritious food, so they have a smaller stomach. In addition, they need soft paws with movable clawed fingers to sneak up on prey unnoticed and grab it. The neck of predators should be short, teeth sharp, etc.

Cuvier called this correspondence of animal organs to each other the principle of correlations (correlativity). Guided by the principle of correlations, Cuvier successfully applied the acquired knowledge, being able to restore the appearance of an animal from a single tooth, because in any fragment of the body, as in a mirror, the whole animal was reflected.

The undoubted merit of Cuvier was the application of the principle of correlations in paleontology, when restoring the appearance of animals that had long disappeared from the face of the Earth. Thanks to the work of Cuvier, today we imagine what dinosaurs, mammoths and mastodons looked like - the whole world of fossil animals. Thus, Cuvier, who himself proceeded from the idea of ​​the constancy of species, not seeing transitional forms between modern animals and those who lived before, introduced huge contribution in the development of evolutionary theory, which appeared half a century later.

In the course of his research, Cuvier became interested in the history of the Earth, terrestrial animals and plants. He spent many years studying it, making many valuable discoveries in the process. In particular, he found that the remains of some species are confined to the same geological strata, while in neighboring strata there are completely different organisms. On this basis, he concluded that the animals that inhabited our planet died almost instantly from unknown causes, and then completely different species appeared in their place. In addition, he found that many modern land areas used to be the seabed, and the change of sea and land occurred repeatedly.

As a result of his research, Cuvier came to the conclusion that gigantic cataclysms periodically occurred on Earth, destroying entire continents, and with them their inhabitants. Later, new organisms appeared in their place. Thus was formulated the famous theory of catastrophes, which was very popular in the 19th century.

The followers and students of Cuvier, developing his teaching, went even further, arguing that catastrophes covered the entire globe. After each catastrophe, a new act of Divine creation followed. They numbered twenty-seven such catastrophes and, consequently, acts of creation.

Scientific works

Georges Cuvier's contributions to biology are summarized in this article.

Georges Cuvier: contribution to biology

Georges Cuvier(years of life 1769-1832) - a great French scientist who is the founder of paleontology. Before him, such science did not exist. Paleontology is the science of fossil organisms, animals that lived in past geological epochs on our planet. Of course, when a person found the remains of previously extinct animals, he was very surprised. However, scientists could not find this reasonable explanation.

Georges Cuvier contribution to the development of biology

Once, Georges Cuvier studied fossilized bones near the Parisian plaster quarries. During a long study, the scientist was convinced that they belonged to extinct animals. He managed to collect a large number of such finds. After he ordered the finds into a system and described them. He was the first to develop a method to study fossil animals on the same level as living organisms. The scientist succeeded establish the law of the ratio of organs or the law of correlation. It says: "the structure of individual parts of the body is directly related to the specific structure of its other parts."

The achievements in biology of Georges Cuvier cannot be overestimated. The scientist, carefully following the changes in organs in vertebrates, was able to improve the comparative method to such a level that it made it possible to restore the structure of the animal from individual bones as a whole. He continues to study animals, analyze the differences and similarities between them. All these studies laid the foundation for a new trend in science - comparative anatomy.

What did Georges Cuvier discover?

Thanks to the hard work of the scientist, the theory of " ratios of body parts". According to the theory, all structures and organs are interconnected. And their function and structure depend on nutrition, environment, breeding. As an example, the analysis of an ungulate animal is given. Since it feeds on grass, it has massive teeth. A powerful jaw requires highly developed musculature, so the head will also be large (in relation to the rest of the body). The massive head needs to be supported. This means that the vertebrae of the cervical region and its processes will be well developed. Since the animal is a herbivore, it does not have claws and fangs. They have horns to protect themselves from predators. Food plant origin takes a very long time to digest. As a result, they have long intestines, large stomachs, large belly and wide hips.

What did Georges Cuvier do for biology?

The important merits of Georges Cuvier in biology are that he established the concept of types in zoology. He first combined amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, and mammals into a phylum of vertebrates. The scientist was sure that all living forms existed from the very beginning, the beginning of the development of life on the planet.

Georges Cuvier advances in paleontology led to the discovery of unseen creatures. For example, pterodactyls - flying reptiles that were previously predators that feed on fish. The scientist proved that about a million years ago the sky was dominated not by birds, but by reptiles.

Georges Cuvier discoveries in science concern and catastrophe theory. He rejected the principle historical development animal world. The scientist assured that sudden changes occur in the earth's crust from time to time, which cause the death of entire regions of the globe. Then they are restored as a result of the act of new creation. Terrestrial forms of fauna spread gradually from other areas over continental new areas.

We hope that from this article you have learned what Georges Cuvier did for biology and science in general.