Georges Cuvier

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.

Baron Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (August 23, 1769 – May 13, 1832) was a French naturalist and zoologist. He was a major figure in scientific circles in Paris during the early 19th century, and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology by comparing living animals with fossils. He is well known for establishing that extinction was a fact, being the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century, and opposing early evolutionary theories. His most famous work is the Règne animal distribué d'après son organisation (1817; translated into English as The Animal Kingdom). He died in Paris of cholera.

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• Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.
  • as quoted from "Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth".

• It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.
  • as stated in 1796 before the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in Paris, concerning fossil elephants.

• The works which this man leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent.
  • about the writings of Joseph Banks. as stated in "Cavendish: The Experimental Life" on page 461, by Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, published in 1999.