(Pierre Joseph) Auguste Bravard (18 June 1803 – 28 March 1861) was a French mining engineer turned

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

. He hunted fossils in the

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.Puy de Dôme Puy de Dôme (, ; oc, label=Auvergnat, Puèi Domat or ) is a lava dome and one of the youngest volcanoes in the region of Massif Central in central France. This chain of volcanoes including numerous cinder cones, lava domes and maars is ...

Biography

Bravard emigrated to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

in the winter of 1852-53 and was a long-term resident in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

. He unearthed and studied mammalian fossils, some of which, like the skull of ''

Mesotherium ''Mesotherium'' ("Middle Beast") is an extinct genus of mesotheriid, a long-lasting family of superficially rodent-like, burrowing notoungulates from South America. It one of the youngest notoungulates, and the last known member of Typotheria. I ...

'', were sent back to the

Muséum d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

, Paris.

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

mammal fossils purchased from Bravard are also in the Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, London, transferred from the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, which had purchased them from Bravard in 1854. Bravard, who became director of the natural history museum in Paraná, upheld geological theories contrary to those of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

. From Buenos Aires, he explored in Bahía Blanca, resulting in his ''Mapa geológico y topográfico de los alrededores de Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires'' (1857). He also explored the Paraná basin and the

pampas The Pampas (from the qu, pampa, meaning "plain") are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all of Uruguay; and Brazi ...

. Periodically Bravard lithographed his letters and distributed them to geologists in Europe. After his unexpected death in the Mendoza earthquake of 1861, his remarkable collection of fossils disappeared. At the turn of the twentieth century, an auction of unclaimed crates by the Buenos Aires customs office revealed the collection, which was handed over to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Buenos Aires.Parodiz 1981:117. At

Issoire Issoire (; Auvergnat: ''Issoire'', ''Ussoire'') is a commune in the Puy-de-Dôme department in Auvergne in central France. Geography Issoire is located on the river Couze, near its confluence with the Allier, SSE of Clermont-Ferrand on the ...

, he is commemorated in the rue August Bravard.

Works

* ''Catalogue des especes d'animaux fossiles recuilies dans I'Amerique du Sud'' (1852-1856) * ''Observaciones geológicas sobre diferentes terrenos de transporte de la hoya del Plata'' (1857) * ''Estado físico del territorio. Geología de las Pampas'' (1858) * ''Carta geológica de la Provincia de Entre Ríos'' (1858)
''Monografía de los terrenos marinos terciarios de las cercanías del Paraná'' (1858)

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bravard, Auguste 1803 births 1861 deaths People from Issoire French paleontologists French emigrants to Argentina French mining engineers People from Buenos Aires Deaths in earthquakes Natural disaster deaths in Argentina