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Mary Anning's legacy to French vertebrate palaeontology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2013

PEGGY VINCENT ,
PHILIPPE TAQUET ,
VALENTIN FISCHER ,
NATHALIE BARDET ,
JOCELYN FALCONNET  and
PASCAL GODEFROIT
PEGGY VINCENT*
Affiliation:
Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany
PHILIPPE TAQUET
Affiliation:
CR2P UMR 7207 CNRS-MNHN-UPMC, Département Histoire de la Terre, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CP 38, 57 rue Cuvier, F-75231 Paris cedex 05, France
VALENTIN FISCHER
Affiliation:
Operational Directorate ‘Earth and History of Life’, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, 29 Rue Vautier, Brussels, Belgium Département de Géologie, Université de Liège, B-18, Allée du 6 Août, Sart-Tilman, 4000 Liège, Belgium
NATHALIE BARDET
Affiliation:
CR2P UMR 7207 CNRS-MNHN-UPMC, Département Histoire de la Terre, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CP 38, 57 rue Cuvier, F-75231 Paris cedex 05, France
JOCELYN FALCONNET
Affiliation:
CR2P UMR 7207 CNRS-MNHN-UPMC, Département Histoire de la Terre, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CP 38, 57 rue Cuvier, F-75231 Paris cedex 05, France
PASCAL GODEFROIT
Affiliation:
Operational Directorate ‘Earth and History of Life’, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, 29 Rue Vautier, Brussels, Belgium
*
†Author for correspondence: pvincent@mnhn.fr
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Abstract

The real nature of marine reptile fossils found in England between the 1700s and 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 Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (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 have re-examined these important specimens from a historical point of view, and describe them here 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).

Keywords

Mary AnningGeorges CuvierLower JurassicIchthyosauriaPlesiosauria
Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 151 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 7 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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