Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny

French paleontologist born in Couëron, in the Loire-Atlantique department, near Nantes, in the Pays de la Loire Region, considered the founder of micropaleontology, an important science today for oil prospecting, and the first to define geological formations as stages of sedimentation. He researched ethnography, natural history and geology in South America (1826-1834), the results of which he published in Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale, a work in 11 volumes (1834 -1847).
With his studies of fossils in the Paraná basin he created micropaleontology, and by theorizing that the different layers of sedimentary rocks resulted from depositions successive periodicals, identifiable by the dating of the fossils, created the stratigraphic paleontology, which provided the basis for the nomenclature of the various land. Unlike Darwin, however, he believed that each stage presented an independent fauna, brought about by a special act of creation.
He also published Paléontologie française (1840-1854), describing fossil invertebrate species found in sites geological aspects of France and the Prodrome de paleontologie stratigraphique, with more than 18 000 species of fossils he knew and identified. Appointed (1853) to the chair of paleontology at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, created in his honor, he died four years later in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine.


Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG

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