Alcide d'Orbigny

D'Orbigny travelled on a mission for the Paris Museum, in South America between 1826 and 1833. He visited Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and returned to France with an enormous collection of more than 10,000 natural history specimens. He described part of his findings in ''La Relation du Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale pendant les années 1826 à 1833'' (Paris, 1824–47, in 90 fascicles). The other specimens were described by zoologists at the museum. His contemporary, Charles Darwin, arrived in South America in 1832, and on hearing that he had been preceded, grumbled that D'Orbigny had probably collected "the cream of all the good things". Darwin later called D'Orbigny's Voyage a "most important work". They went on to correspond, with D'Orbigny describing some of Darwin's specimens. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Société de Géographie of Paris in 1834. The South American Paleocene pantodont Alcidedorbignya was named in his honour. ==1840 and later==

In 1840, d'Orbigny started the methodical description of French fossils and published La Paléontologie Française (8 vols). In 1849 he published a closely related Prodrome de Paléontologie Stratigraphique, intended as a "Preface to Stratigraphic Palaeontology", in which he described almost 18,000 species, and with biostratigraphical comparisons erected geological stages, the definitions of which rest on their stratotypes. In 1853 he became professor of palaeontology at the Paris Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, publishing his Cours élémentaire that related paleontology to zoology, as a science independent of the uses made of it in stratigraphy. The chair of paleontology was created especially in his honor. The d'Orbigny collection is housed in the ''Salle d'Orbigny'' and is often visited by experts. He described the geological timescales and defined numerous geological strata, still used today as chronostratigraphic reference such as Toarcian, Callovian, Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian, Aptian, Albian and Cenomanian. He died in the small town of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, near Paris. ==Catastrophism==

D'Orbigny, a disciple of Georges Cuvier, was a notable advocate of catastrophism. He recognized twenty-seven catastrophes in the fossil record. This became known as the "doctrine of successive creations". He attempted to reconcile the fossil record with the Genesis creation narrative. Both uniformitarian geologists and theologians rejected his idea of successive creations. L. Sprague de Camp has written that "Alcide d'Orbigny, carried the idea to absurdity. Dragging in the supernatural, d'Orbigny argued that, on twenty-seven separate occasions, God had wiped out all life on earth and started over with a whole new creation." ==Taxa==

Several zoological and botanical taxa were named in his honor, including the following genera and species. • Alcidedorbignya – an extinct genus of pantodont mammal • Alcidia Bourguignat, 1889 – a genus of sea snails • Ampullaria dorbignyana Philippi, 1851 – a species of freshwater snail • Apostolepis dorbignyi Schlegel, 1837 – a species of burrowing snake • Asthenes dorbignyi Reichenbach, 1853 - a species of furnariid bird • Bachia dorbignyi A.M.C. Duméril & Bibron, 1839 – a species of lizard • Chaunus dorbignyi (A.M.C. Duméril & Bibron, 1841) – a species of toad • Haminoea orbignyana A. de Férussac, 1822 – a species of sea snail • Hecticoceras (Orbignyceras) C. Gérard & H. Contaut, 1936 – a subgenus of ammonite from the Callovian • Liolaemus dorbignyi Koslowsky, 1898 – a species of lizard • Trachemys dorbigni – a species of freshwater turtle In the above list, a taxon author or binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than the genus to which the species is currently assigned. == Publications ==