Georges Cuvier has founded the science of…

Georges Cuvier has founded the science of paleontology.

The belief that no species of animal had ever become extinct was still widely held when Cuvier presented his paper on living and fossil elephants in 1796.

Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils found in Europe of animals such as the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth were remains of animals still living in the tropics (i.e., rhinoceroses and elephants), which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler.

Cuvier's early work had demonstrated conclusively that this was not the case.

None of Cuvier's many works attain a higher reputation than his Le Règne Animal, the first edition of which appears in four octavo volumes in 1817.