The “Real Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa” and the adventure of Pierre Auguste Broussonet, a pioneer of Brazil's Ichthyology and of the scientific relationships between Portugal and France.

Pierre Auguste Broussonet appears to be the first researcher engaged in the study of the fishes from the Portuguese collections on Natural History, and especially the Royal Museum of Ajuda collections, including the utmost important one collected in Brazil by Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira. He also dealt with the collection of fishes from the Royal Academy of Sciences, the institution that supported him during his stay of approximately four months in Lisbon, where he arrived sometime in September or October 1794. An experienced Naturalist, especially on Ichthyology, he produced a pioneer work on an entirely unknown collection, that of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. This collection had certainly been transferred from the Royal Natural History Museum at Ajuda. Our present status of knowledge is largely based on documents from the Bibliothèque Centrale of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. The document on fishes from the Academy's Museum (Table 3) is evidence for the intervention of Broussonet. This document is therefore and by far the more important one as far as Broussonet's intervention is concerned. Broussonet is thus a remarkable pioneer of the scientific cooperation between Portugal and France

Mary Anning’s legacy to French vertebrate palaeontology

peer reviewedThe real nature of marine reptile fossils found in England in between the 1700s to the beginning of the 1900s remained enigmatic, until Mary Anning's incredible fossil discoveries and their subsequent study by eminent English and French scientists. In 1820, Georges Cuvier acquired several ichthyosaur specimens found by Mary Anning, now kept or displayed in the Palaeontology Gallery of the MNHN in Paris. Four years later, Cuvier obtained a plesiosaur specimen from Mary Anning, only the second ever discovered. Cuvier was fascinated by these fossils and their study allowed him to apply his comparative anatomical method and to support his catastrophist theory. We re-examined these important specimens from an historical point of view and herein describe them taxonomically for the first time since Cuvier’s works. The Paris specimens belong to two different ichthyosaur genera (Ichthyosaurus and Leptonectes) and one plesiosaur genus (Plesiosaurus)

A new Mastodonsauroid Temnospondyl from the Triassic of Algeria: Implications for the biostratigraphy and palaeoenvironments of the Zarzaïtine Series, northern Sahara

AbstractWe describe a new species of mastodonsauroid temnospondyl from Algeria, Stanocephalosaurus amenasensis nov. sp., on the basis of two exquisite skulls from a Lagerstätte found in the lowermost formation of the Zarzaïtine Series, Illizi Basin, in the area of “La Reculée”, In Amenas region, Algeria. The new species is characterized by subtriangular nostrils with concave lateral borders; small orbits; postfrontals posteriorly very wide; very elongate parietals; smoothly concave posterior margin of the skull; ovoid anterior palatal vacuities; very posteriorly pointed choanae; oval interpterygoid fenestrae; and a short anterior extension of the cultriform process of the parasphenoid. S. amenasensis is different than the Algerian taxa previously erected by Lehman (1971)–“Parotosaurus lapparenti” and “Wellesaurus bussoni”–which we consider nomina dubia. It enlarges the distribution of the genus in northern Gondwana and supports the Early-Middle Triassic age of the lowermost formation of the Zarzaïtine Series. It also suggests that the local palaeoclimate was very seasonal and these aquatic amphibians died massively in a dewatering sebkha

Prólogo. Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny (1802-1857). Del Nuevo Mundo al pasado del mundo

En este año 2002 celebramos el bicentenario del nacimiento de Alcide Victor Marie Dessalines d’Orbigny, gran naturalista, viajero y científico de talento, quien nació en Couéron, cerca de Nantes en 1802. Alcide d’Orbigny provenía de una familia de viajeros y de naturalistas. Su padre, Charles-Marie, médico en la Marina, le transmitió su entusiasmo por las ciencias naturales. La familia d’Orbigny se instaló en La Rochelle en 1820 en cuyo litoral Alcide se apasionó desde muy joven por el estudi..

Georges Cuvier, explorateur des mondes disparus

Taquet Philippe. Georges Cuvier, explorateur des mondes disparus . In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 156e année, N. 4, 2012. pp. 1805-1810