Pierre Boitard (27 April 1787

Mâcon Mâcon (), historically anglicised as Mascon, is a city in east-central France. It is the prefecture of the department of Saône-et-Loire in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Mâcon is home to near 34,000 residents, who are referred to in French as M� ...

Saône-et-Loire Saône-et-Loire (; Arpitan: ''Sona-et-Lêre'') is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the rivers Saône and Loire, between which it lies, in the country's central-eastern part. Saône-et-Loire is Bo ...

– 25 August 1859) was a French

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

and

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 ...

. As well as describing and classifying the

Tasmanian devil The Tasmanian devil (''Sarcophilus harrisii'') (palawa kani: purinina) is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. Until recently, it was only found on the island state of Tasmania, but it has been reintroduced to New South Wales in ...

, he is notable for his fictional natural history ''Paris avant les hommes'' (''Paris Before Man''), published posthumously in 1861, which described a prehistoric ape-like human ancestor living in the region of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. He also wrote ''Curiosités d'histoire naturelle et astronomie amusante'', ''Réalités fantastiques'', ''Voyages dans les planètes'', ''Manuel du naturaliste préparateur ou l’art d’empailler les animaux et de conserver les végétaux et les minéraux'', ''Manuel d'entomologie'' etc.

References

External links

* Stephen Trussel
"Paris Before Man"Gallica
Digitised texts *
Pierre Boitard
on

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (SFE) is an English language reference work on science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and f ...

1787 births 1859 deaths People from Mâcon 19th-century French botanists French geologists 19th-century French zoologists Writers of fiction set in prehistoric times {{France-botanist-stub