Cuvier Publishes Theory of Catastrophism

Georges Cuvier introduces catastrophism in the preliminary discourse of Recherches sur les ossements fossiles, published in Paris. Drawing on comparative anatomy and fossil evidence from the Paris Basin, Cuvier argues that Earth's geological strata record a series of sudden catastrophic events that destroyed entire species. He proposes multiple successive faunas separated by these revolutions, establishing vertebrate paleontology as a discipline and challenging prevailing gradualist assumptions about geological change.