Maurice Jules Marie Collignon (9 June 1893,

Saint-Malo Saint-Malo (, , ; Gallo: ; ) is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, on the English Channel coast. The walled city had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Alli ...

– 21 October 1978,

Moirans Moirans () is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. Population See also *Communes of the Isère department The following is a list of the 512 Communes of France, communes in the French Departments of France, department ...

) was a French

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

and

paleontologist 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 ...

, who is best known for his research of

Cretaceous period The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of t ...

ammonite Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) ...

s from

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. A career military officer, in 1914 he received his diploma from the military academy at Saint-Cyr, then spent the next 36 years associated with the French armed services. In the meantime he conducted geological and paleontological research; as early as 1928 he was providing descriptions of ammonite fauna from Madagascar.Upper Cretaceous) of - ResearchGate
/ref> In 1950 he retired from military service with the rank of major general. He then joined the ''Service géologique d'outre-mer'' as a paleontologist,Sociétés savantes de France
biographical information and afterwards directed four 6-month missions of paleontological exploration in Madagascar (1952, 1953, 1954, 1957). From 1959 to 1978 he was a correspondent member of the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...

. During his career, he described numerous fossil taxa, such as the ammonite genus ''

Cunningtoniceras ''Cunningtoniceras'' is a stocky acanthoceratid ammonite from the upper Cenomanian stage of the late Cretaceous of the western U.S., found e.g. in Arizona and New Mexico. ''Cunningtoniceras'' was proposed by Maurice Collignon, 1927, for ribbed ...

''. The ammonite family

Collignoniceratidae Collignoniceratidae is a family of Upper Cretaceous ammonites characterized by typically more or less evolute shells with compressed, oval, or square whorl sections; serrate or entire keels; and dense ribs with one to 5 tubercles. Taxonomy This ...

commemorates his name.

Principal works

* ''Ammonites néocrétacées du Ménabe (Madagascar)'', 6 volumes, 1948-56 – Neo-Cretaceous ammonites of

Menabe Menabe is a Regions of Madagascar, region in western Madagascar, with its capital at Morondava. It covers an area of , and its population was 700,577 in 2018. The population mostly belongs to the Sakalava ethnic group. The region is named after th ...

. * ''Recherches sur les faunes albiennes de Madagascar'', 5 volumes, 1949-51 – Research of

Albian The Albian is both an age of the geologic timescale and a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early/Lower Cretaceous Epoch/Series. Its approximate time range is 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma to 100.5 ± 0.9 M ...

fauna of Madagascar. * ''Atlas des fossiles caractéristiques de Madagascar'', (multi-volume, 1958 ff.) – Atlas of characteristic fossils of Madagascar.IDREF.fr
bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collignon, Maurice 1893 births 1978 deaths People from Saint-Malo 20th-century French geologists French paleontologists