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Language: French
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the founding figures of vertebrate palaeontology, pursued a successful scientific career despite the political upheavals in France during his lifetime. In the 1790s, Cuvier's work on fossil mammoths enabled him to recognise that these were a different species from modern elephants, and that extinction was a scientific fact. He went on to show that many other large mammals had also become extinct.
This four-volume work, originally published in 1812, is a collection of Cuvier's geological and osteological papers, focusing on fossil mammals including mastodon, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, ruminants, horses and pigs, and related living species. The introductory essay considers human origins and the formation of the earth, and appeared in English translation in 1813 (also available). Cuvier went on to publish his famous Le Règne Animal, available in the Cambridge Library Collection both in French (1817) and in Edward Griffith's expanded English translation (1827-35).
Volume 1: Avertissement
Discours preliminaire
Memoire sur l'ibis des anciens Egyptiens
Description mineralogique des environs de Paris
Corrections et additions aux tomes II, III et IV
Volume 2
1. Remarques generales sur la famille des pachydermes
2. Description osteologique et comparative du daman
3. Description osteologique du rhinoceros unicorne
4 Sur les ossemens fossiles de rhinoceros
5. Sur l'hippopotame et sur son osteologie
6. Sur les ossemens fossiles d'hippopotames
7. Description osteologique du tapir
8. Sur les ossemens fossiles de tapir
9. Sur les elephans vivans et fossiles
10. Sur le grand mastodonte, vulg. animal de l'Ohio
11. Sur divers mastodontes de moindre taille
12. Resume general de cette premiere partie
Volume 3
1. Introduction
2. Sur les especes d'animaux dont proviennent les os fossiles de Paris
Volume 4
1. Ossemens de ruminans, de chevaux, et de cochons
2. Ossemens de carnassiers et d'autres onguicules
3. Ossemens fossiles de quadrupedes
