---
title: "History of paleontology"
chunk: 5/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:05.779726+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Smithsonian Libraries consider that the first edition of a work which laid the foundation to vertebrate paleontology was Georges Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes (Researches on quadruped fossil bones), published in France in 1812. Referring to the second edition of this work (1821), Cuvier's disciple and editor of the scientific publication Journal de physique Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville published in January 1822, in the Journal de physique, an article titled "Analyse des principaux travaux dans les sciences physiques, publiés dans l'année 1821" ("Analysis of the main works in the physical sciences, published in the year 1821"). In this article Blainville unveiled for the first time the printed word palæontologie which later gave the English word "paleontology". Blainville had already coined the term paléozoologie in 1817 to refer to the work Cuvier and others were doing to reconstruct extinct animals from fossil bones. However, Blainville began looking for a term that could refer to the study of both fossil animal and plant remains. After trying some unsuccessful alternatives, he hit on "palaeontologie" in 1822. Blainville's term for the study of the fossilized organisms quickly became popular and was anglicized into "paleontology".
In 1828 Alexandre Brongniart's son, the botanist Adolphe Brongniart, published the introduction to a longer work on the history of fossil plants. Adolphe Brongniart concluded that the history of plants could roughly be divided into four parts. The first period was characterized by cryptogams. The second period was characterized by the appearance of the conifers. The third period brought emergence of the cycads, and the fourth by the development of the flowering plants (such as the dicotyledons). The transitions between each of these periods was marked by sharp discontinuities in the fossil record, with more gradual changes within the periods. Brongniart's work is the foundation of paleobotany and reinforced the theory that life on earth had a long and complex history, and different groups of plants and animals made their appearances in successive order. It also supported the idea that the Earth's climate had changed over time as Brongniart concluded that plant fossils showed that during the Carboniferous the climate of Northern Europe must have been tropical. The term "paleobotany" was coined in 1884 and "palynology" in 1944.

=== The age of mammals ===

In 1804, Cuvier identified two fossil mammal genera from the gypsum quarries of the outskirts of Paris (known as the Paris Basin) in France (although the fossils were known by him as early as at least 1800). Unlike earlier-discovered fossil mammals like Megatherium and Mammut, the 1804-described fossil mammals were discovered from deeper deposits instead of surface deposits, indicating older ages (late Eocene epoch). He identified that the two genera were definitely mammals based on dental and postcranial evidence and were similar to extant mammals such as tapirs, camels, and pigs. However, he also identified that they differed from each other and extant mammals based on dental evidence. He named the two genera Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium. Later in 1807, he wrote about two incomplete skeletons of A. commune that were just recently uncovered from the communes of Pantin and Antony, respectively. Despite the skeletons being incomplete and the first being partially damaged from not being carefully collected by workers, he was able to determine based on postcranial evidence that A. commune was similar to animals that would eventually be classified in the order Artiodactyla after his lifetime. However, Cuvier expressed his surprise at how A. commune sported highly unusual traits of which there are no modern analogues in its extant relatives, such as a long and robust tail of 22 caudal vertebrae and third small fingers in its feet in addition to two long ones.
In 1812, Cuvier followed up with published drawn reconstructions on known remains of "Palaeotherium" minor (= Plagiolophus minor), "Anoplotherium medium" (= Xiphodon gracilis), and, most famously, Anoplotherium commune. In A. commune, he was able to predict accurately that A. commune had robust muscles in its entire body to support its short limbs and long tail. He also described hypothesized paleobiologies of the different species assigned to Anoplotherium (some of which would eventually be assigned to different Paleogene artiodactyls such as Xiphodon and Dichobune). His skeletal reconstructions of fossil mammal genera and hypothesis of paleoecological behaviors are considered among the earliest instances within paleontology. He also drew muscle reconstructions of A. commune based on known skeletal remains of the species, which were reprinted but never published to the public out of his concern that they were too speculative. Today, however, his muscle reconstructions of A. commune are seen as accurate and having paved the way for paleoart and biomechanics.

=== The age of reptiles ===