Jean-Théodore Cocteau (1798–1838) was a French herpetologist, who was associated with
Duméril,
Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...
, and
Bibron
Gabriel Bibron (20 October 1805 – 27 March 1848) was a French zoologist and herpetologist. He was born in Paris. The son of an employee of the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, he had a good foundation in natural history and was hire ...
, and corresponded with other workers in zoology around the world. Cocteau published a volume on
skink
Skinks are a type of lizard belonging to the family (biology), family Scincidae, a family in the Taxonomic rank, infraorder Scincomorpha. With more than 1,500 described species across 100 different taxonomic genera, the family Scincidae is one o ...
s, ''Etudes sur les Scincoïdes'', and named a number of new taxa.
Cocteau is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of giant skink, ''
Chioninia coctei
The Cape Verde giant skink (''Chioninia coctei''), also called Bibron's skink, Cocteau's skink, and ''lagarto'' in Cape Verdean Portuguese, is a recently extinct species of large lizard (skink) that was endemic to some of the Barlavento Islands o ...
'', which is now extinct.
[ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Cocteau", p. 56).]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cocteau, Jean-Theodore
French herpetologists
1798 births
1838 deaths