Head of the Natural History Museum of Paris, Cuvier was a French naturalist considered the first scientist to study comparative anatomy. He dedicated his life to studying the museum’s fossil collection, comparing them to the bones of living animals. Cuvier understood that the anatomical similarities between two species were not random but rather the result of relatedness. He was the first to argue that an animal’s diet determined the shape of its teeth; the shape was not arbitrary. Cuvier could study a single tooth, nail, or bone and determine an animal’s morphology, lifestyle, and diet.

At a conference in 1796, Cuvier amazed the audience by showing the bones of African and Asian elephants, along with the bones of a strange elephant found in the museum’s collection. Based on the differences, he concluded that the first two sets of bones were from two separate species. Since the differences in the bone structure were greater, Cuvier argued that the third set of bones came from an extinct species. He claimed that this extinct species, mammoths, walked the Earth before the appearance of humans.

Cuvier opposed “transformism,” the term used for evolution at the time, because he did not know of any intermediate fossils between the species he studied. Instead, he believed in “catastrophism,” the idea proposing that the planet experienced sudden, short-lived, violent events, which were possibly worldwide in scope. These catastrophes provoked the extinction of certain species and their replacement by others. Species remained unchanged for very long periods of time. As far as human beings were concerned, Cuvier never dared suggest that their origin might be supernatural but instead affirmed that they had appeared on the planet relatively recently.

Today, all the bones studied by Cuvier are housed at the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy in Paris.