French naturalist

Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron Cuvier was a French naturalist who is known as the founder of the field of paleontology, as well as the founder of comparative anatomy.

Cuvier was born in Montbeliard, near Basel. Although a French town, Cuvier's birthplace at that time belonged to the Duchy of Wërttemberg. Cuvier was an academically inclined young man and, because his family lived in near-poverty, he accepted the offer to study for free at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart, Germany. He graduated at eighteen, returned home, and then found employment as a tutor in Normandy. While working in Normandy, he familiarized himself with the marine creatures he found on the beach, which he dissected and drew in detail. While doing so, he referred to Aristotle's ideas of comparing different animal structures, Carl Linnaeus's System of Nature and...