Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French
naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
(including
malacology
Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams ...
),
palaeontology
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 ...
,
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
,
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts ...
and
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
.
D'Orbigny was born in
Couëron
Couëron (; ) is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France. It is part of the historic French Brittany.
Couëron is one of the 24 communes of the Nantes Métropole.
Geography
Physical geography
Couëron is located 10 m ...
(
Loire-Atlantique
Loire-Atlantique (; br, Liger-Atlantel; before 1957: ''Loire-Inférieure'', br, Liger-Izelañ, link=no) is a department in Pays de la Loire on the west coast of France, named after the river Loire and the Atlantic Ocean. It had a population ...
), the son of a ship's physician and amateur naturalist. The family moved to
La Rochelle
La Rochelle (, , ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''La Rochéle''; oc, La Rochèla ) is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department. Wit ...
in 1820, where his interest in natural history was developed while studying the marine fauna and especially the microscopic creatures that he named "
foraminifera
Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly ...
ns".
In Paris he became a disciple of the geologist
Pierre Louis Antoine Cordier Pierre Louis Antoine Cordier (31 March 1777 – 30 March 1861)
Annales.org, accessed 20 September 2009 was a French (1777–1861) and
Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in na ...
. All his life, he would follow the theory of Cuvier and stay opposed to
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
.
South American era
D'Orbigny travelled on a mission for the Paris Museum, in South America between 1826 and 1833. He visited Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and returned to France with an enormous collection of more than 10,000 natural history specimens. He described part of his findings in ''La Relation du Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale pendant les annés 1826 à 1833'' (Paris, 1824–47, in 90
fascicles). The other specimens were described by zoologists at the museum.
His contemporary,
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
, arrived in South America in 1832, and on hearing that he had been preceded, grumbled that D'Orbigny had probably collected "the cream of all the good things".
Darwin later called D'Orbigny's Voyage a "most important work".
They went on to correspond, with D'Orbigny describing some of Darwin's specimens.
He was awarded the
Gold Medal of the
Société de Géographie
The Société de Géographie (; ), is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 as the first Geographic Society. Since 1878, its headquarters have been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gig ...
of Paris in 1834. The South American Paleocene
pantodont
Pantodonta is an extinct suborder (or, according to some, an order) of eutherian mammals. These herbivorous mammals were one of the first groups of large mammals to evolve (around 66 million years ago) after the end of the Cretaceous. The las ...
''
Alcidedorbignya
''Alcidedorbignya'' is an extinct pantodont mammal known from the Early Paleocene (Tiupampan SALMA, ) Santa Lucia Formation (, paleocoordinates ) at Tiupampa near Mizque, Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Following a naming convention established by pio ...
'' was named in his honour.
1840 and later
In 1840, d'Orbigny started the methodical description of French
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s and published ''La Paléontologie Française'' (8 vols). In 1849 he published a closely related ''Prodrome de Paléontologie Stratigraphique'', intended as a "Preface to Stratigraphic Palaeontology", in which he described almost 18,000 species, and with biostratigraphical comparisons erected
geological stage
In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a succession of rock strata laid down in a single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition. A given stage of rock and the corresponding age of time will by conventi ...
s, the definitions of which rest on their stratotypes.
In 1853 he became professor of palaeontology at the Paris
Muséum National 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 loca ...
, publishing his ''Cours élémentaire'' that related
paleontology
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 fos ...
to
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
, as a science independent of the uses made of it in
stratigraphy
Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers ( strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks.
Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithost ...
. The chair of paleontology was created especially in his honor. The d'Orbigny collection is housed in the ''Salle d'Orbigny'' and is often visited by experts.
He described the geological timescales and defined numerous geological strata, still used today as
chronostratigraphic
Chronostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy that studies the ages of rock strata in relation to time.
The ultimate aim of chronostratigraphy is to arrange the sequence of deposition and the time of deposition of all rocks within a geological ...
reference such as Toarcian, Callovian, Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian,
Aptian
The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ag ...
,
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 ± ...
and
Cenomanian. He died in the small town of
Pierrefitte-sur-Seine
Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (, literally ''Pierrefitte on Seine'') is a commune in the Seine-Saint-Denis department and Île-de-France region of France. Today forming part of the northern suburbs of Paris, Pierrefitte lies from the centre of the Fre ...
, near Paris.
Catastrophism
D'Orbigny, a disciple of Georges Cuvier, was a notable advocate of
catastrophism
In geology, catastrophism theorises that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.
This contrasts with uniformitarianism (sometimes called gradualism), according to which slow incrementa ...
.
He recognized twenty-seven catastrophes in the
fossil record
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
.
[ Singer, Charles Joseph. (1931). ''The Story of Living Things: A Short Account of the Evolution of the Biological Sciences''. Harper & Bros. p. 232] This became known as the "doctrine of successive creations".
[ Prothero, Donald R. (2013). ''Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology''. Columbia University Press. p. 223. ] He attempted to reconcile the fossil record with the
Genesis creation narrative. Both
uniformitarian
Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...
geologists and theologians rejected his idea of successive creations.
Palaeontologist
Carroll Lane Fenton
Carroll Lane Fenton (February 12, 1900, Butler County, Iowa – November 16, 1969, New Brunswick, New Jersey) was a geologist, paleontologist, neoichnologist, and historian of science. Fenton was the author and illustrator of numerous books ...
has noted that his idea of twenty-seven world-wide creations was "absurd", even for creationists.
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp (; November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and works of non-fiction, including biog ...
has written that "Alcide d'Orbigny, carried the idea to absurdity. Dragging in the supernatural, d'Orbigny argued that, on twenty-seven separate occasions, God had wiped out all life on earth and started over with a whole new creation."
Taxa
Several zoological and
botanical
Botany, also called plant science (or plant sciences), 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 ...
taxa
In biology, a taxon ( back-formation from '' taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular n ...
were named in his honor, including the following
genera
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial ...
and
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
.
*''
Alcidedorbignya
''Alcidedorbignya'' is an extinct pantodont mammal known from the Early Paleocene (Tiupampan SALMA, ) Santa Lucia Formation (, paleocoordinates ) at Tiupampa near Mizque, Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Following a naming convention established by pio ...
'' – an extinct genus of
pantodont
Pantodonta is an extinct suborder (or, according to some, an order) of eutherian mammals. These herbivorous mammals were one of the first groups of large mammals to evolve (around 66 million years ago) after the end of the Cretaceous. The las ...
mammal
*''Alcidia''
Bourguignat, 1889 – a genus of
sea snails
*''
Ampullaria dorbignyana''
Philippi
Philippi (; grc-gre, Φίλιπποι, ''Philippoi'') was a major Greek city northwest of the nearby island, Thasos. Its original name was Crenides ( grc-gre, Κρηνῖδες, ''Krenides'' "Fountains") after its establishment by Thasian col ...
, 1851 – a species of
freshwater snail
Freshwater snails are gastropod mollusks which live in fresh water. There are many different families. They are found throughout the world in various habitats, ranging from ephemeral pools to the largest lakes, and from small seeps and springs ...
*''
Apostolepis dorbignyi
''Apostolepis dorbignyi'', also known commonly as the Bolivian burrowing snake and Dorbigny's blackhead, is a species of snake in the family Colubridae. The species is native to western South America.
Etymology
The specific name, ''dorbignyi ...
''
Schlegel, 1837 – a species of burrowing snake
[Beolens et al.]
*''
Asthenes dorbignyi''
Reichenbach Reichenbach may refer to:
Places Austria
* Reichenbach (Litschau), a part of Litschau
* Reichenbach (Rappottenstein), a part of Rappottenstein
Germany
* Reichenbach (Oberlausitz), in Niederschlesischer Oberlausitzkreis district, Saxony
* Rei ...
, 1853 - a species of
furnariid bird
*''
Bachia dorbignyi
''Bachia dorbignyi'', also known commonly as Dorbigny's bachia and ''lagarto-sem-pata'' in Brazilian Portuguese, is a species of lizard in the family Gymnophthalmidae. The species is native to central South America.
Etymology
The specific n ...
''
A.M.C. Duméril & Bibron, 1839 – a species of
lizard
Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia al ...
[
*'']Cadomites orbignyi
''Cadomites'' is an extinct ammonite genus from the superfamily Stephanoceratoidea that lived during the Middle Jurassic (upper Bajocian – lower Callovian).
Description
''Cadomites'' is directly descended from ''Stephanoceras'', with a simi ...
'' de Grossouvre, 1930 – a species of 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 cuttle ...
s from the Bathonian
In the geologic timescale the Bathonian is an age and stage of the Middle Jurassic. It lasted from approximately 168.3 Ma to around 166.1 Ma (million years ago). The Bathonian Age succeeds the Bajocian Age and precedes the Callovian Age.
St ...
*'' Chaunus dorbignyi'' (A.M.C. Duméril & Bibron, 1841) – a species of toad
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scient ...
*''Haminoea orbignyana
''Haminoea'' is a genus of medium-sized sea snails or bubble snails, marine opisthobranch gastropod molluscs in the family Haminoeidae, the haminoea bubble snails, part of the clade Cephalaspidea, the headshield slugs and bubble snails.Bouchet ...
'' A. de Férussac, 1822 – a species of sea snail
*'' Hecticoceras (Orbignyceras)'' C. Gérard & H. Contaut, 1936 – a subgenus
In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus.
In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed betw ...
of ammonite from the Callovian
In the geologic timescale, the Callovian is an age and stage in the Middle Jurassic, lasting between 166.1 ± 4.0 Ma (million years ago) and 163.5 ± 4.0 Ma. It is the last stage of the Middle Jurassic, following the Bathonian and preceding the ...
*''Liolaemus dorbignyi
''Liolaemus dorbignyi'', also known commonly as D'Orbigny's tree iguana, is a species of lizard in the family Liolaemidae. The species is endemic to South America.
Etymology
The specific name, ''dorbignyi'', is in honor of French naturalis ...
'' Koslowsky, 1898 – a species of lizard[
*'' Lystrophis dorbignyi'' A.M.C. Duméril, Bibron & A.H.A. Duméril, 1854 – a species of snake][
*''Nerocila orbignyi'' ( Guérin, 1832) – a species of ]ectoparasitic
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson ha ...
isopod
Isopoda is an order of crustaceans that includes woodlice and their relatives. Isopods live in the sea, in fresh water, or on land. All have rigid, segmented exoskeletons, two pairs of antennae, seven pairs of jointed limbs on the thorax, an ...
*''Orbignya
''Attalea'' is a large genus of palms native to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America. This pinnately leaved, non-spiny genus includes both small palms lacking an aboveground stem and large trees. The genus has a complicated taxonomi ...
'' Mart.
Carl Friedrich Philipp (Karl Friedrich Philipp) von Martius (17 April 1794 – 13 December 1868) was a German botany, botanist and explorer.
Life
Martius was born at Erlangen, the son of Prof Ernst Wilhelm Martius, court apothecary.
He graduat ...
ex Endl.
Stephan Ladislaus Endlicher also known as Endlicher István László (24 June 1804, Bratislava (Pozsony) – 28 March 1849, Vienna) was an Austrian botanist, numismatist and Sinologist. He was a director of the Botanical Garden of Vienna.
...
– a genus of palm trees
Palm most commonly refers to:
* Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand
* Palm plants, of family Arecaceae
** List of Arecaceae genera
* Several other plants known as "palm"
Palm or Palms may also refer to:
Music
* Palm (b ...
, which includes the species ''Orbignya speciosa'' (Mart. ex Spreng.), commonly known as the Brazilian palm tree or ''babaçu'' in Portuguese
*'' Pinna dorbignyi'' Hanley
Hanley is one of the six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Fenton, Tunstall and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England.
Hanley is the ''de facto'' city centre, having long been th ...
, 1858 – a species of bivalve
Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, biv ...
mollusc
*'' Potamotrygon orbignyi'' ( Castelnau, 1855) – a species of freshwater stingray
Stingrays are a group of sea rays, which are cartilaginous fish related to sharks. They are classified in the suborder Myliobatoidei of the order Myliobatiformes and consist of eight families: Hexatrygonidae (sixgill stingray), Plesiobatid ...
*'' Quadracythere orbignyana'' (Bosquet
In the French formal garden, a ''bosquet'' (French, from Italian ''bosco'', "grove, wood") is a formal plantation of trees in a wide variety of forms, some open at the bottom and others not. At a minimum a bosquet can be five trees of identical s ...
, 1852) – a species of marine ostracod
Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 70,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified, grouped into several orders. They are small crustaceans, typic ...
*''Rhinodoras dorbignyi
''Rhinodoras dorbignyi'' is a species of thorny catfish found in the Paraná River basin in the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Orienta ...
'' ( Kner, 1855) – a species of thorny catfish
*'' Sepia (Rhombosepion) orbignyana'' A. de Férussac in d'Orbigny, 1826 – a species of cuttlefish
Cuttlefish or cuttles are marine molluscs of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique internal shell, the cuttlebone, which is used for control ...
, commonly known as the pink cuttlefish
*'' Subdiscosphinctes orbignyi'' Hantzpergue, 1987 – a species of ammonites from the Kimmeridgian
In the geologic timescale, the Kimmeridgian is an age in the Late Jurassic Epoch and a stage in the Upper Jurassic Series. It spans the time between 157.3 ± 1.0 Ma and 152.1 ± 0.9 Ma (million years ago). The Kimmeridgian follows the Oxford ...
[ Pierre Hantzpergue, ''Les ammonites kimméridgiennes du haut-fond d'Europe occidentale. Biochronologie, systématique, évolution, paléogéographie'', Cahiers de paléontologie, éditions du CNRS, 1989, ]
*''Trachemys dorbigni
D'Orbigny's slider or the black-bellied slider (''Trachemys dorbigni''), commonly known in Brazil as ''tartaruga-tigre'' or ''tartaruga-tigre-d'água'' (which mean "tiger turtle" and "water tiger turtle" in Portuguese), is a species of water tur ...
'' – a species of freshwater turtle
Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked ...
In the above list, a taxon author or binomial authority
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than the genus to which the species is currently assigned.
Publications
*
References
La Gazette des Français du Paraguay, Alcide d'Orbigny – Voyageur Naturaliste pour le Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle dans le Cone Sud – Alcide d'Orbigny – Viajero Naturalista para el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Francia en el Cono Sur – Bilingue Français Espagnol – numéro 7, année 1, Asuncion Paraguay.
Further reading
* Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011)
''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("D'Orbigny", p. 74, "Orbigny", p. 195).
*Taylor, W. Thomas; Taylor, Michael L. (2011). "Alcide d'Orbignyi". ''Aves: A Survey of the Literature of Neotropical Ornithology''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Libraries. 156 pp. .
External links
*
*
Gallica
Digital versions of some d'Orbigny works. Search at ''Recherche''.
''Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Orbigny, Alcide
1802 births
1857 deaths
19th-century French zoologists
Catastrophism
Conchologists
Christian creationists
Critics of Lamarckism
French entomologists
French paleontologists
Teuthologists
National Museum of Natural History (France) people