French geologist and archaeologist Jules Desnoyers introduces the term Quaternary ("fourth") in 1829 to address sediments of France's Seine Basin that seem clearly to be younger than Tertiary Period rocks.
The term Quaternary, originally meant to describe the heterogeneous assemblage of rocks essentially corresponding to the Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Recent epochs of modern usage, had first been proposed in 1759 by Giovanni Arduino, known as the “father of Italian Geology”, for alluvial deposits in the Po river valley in northern Italy.
French chemist Pierre Joseph Pelletier, who has conducted notable research work on vegetable alkaloids, and the co-discoverer of quinine and strychnine, discovers aricine in 1829.