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Why did Cuvier establish extinctions?
Why is Georges Cuvier regarded as the father of paleontology?
Why is Cuvier a major milestone in the history of paleontology?
When did Georges Cuvier die?
Background extinction and catastrophe. On this score, Cuvier has been somewhat vindicated. Perhaps 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth are now extinct. Most of those extinct species disappeared in a Darwinian trickle—what paleontologists call “background extinctions.”
However, Cuvier's theory of extinction is still justified in the case of mass extinctions that occurred in the last 600 million years, when approximately half of all living species went completely extinct within a short geological span of two million years, due in part by volcanic eruptions, asteroids, and rapid fluctuations in sea level.
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May 9, 2024 · catastrophism. fossil. taxonomy. Georges Cuvier (born August 23, 1769, Montbéliard [now in France]—died May 13, 1832, Paris, France) was a French zoologist and statesman, who established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Georges Cuvier is regarded as the father of paleontology. He convinced a skeptical scientific world of the reality of species extinction. He used comparative anatomy, a science he pioneered, to reconstruct extinct animals - for example, he established from drawings that a fossil he named pterodactyl was a flying reptile.
Dec 8, 2013 · Cuvier’s proof of extinction—of “a world previous to ours”—was a sensational event, and news of it soon spread across the Atlantic. When a nearly complete giant skeleton was unearthed by ...
Oct 13, 2015 · Proving Extinction: Cuvier and the Elephantimorpha At the end of the eighteenth century, Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier, also known as Georges Cuvier and widely remembered as the Father of Paleontology, helped establish extinction as a fact and laid the foundation for vertebrate paleontology.