Georges Cuvier's paper museum of fossil bones

The research on fossil bones by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) is an instructive example of the making of scientific knowledge in the indoor setting of a museum: the trajectory of his specimens can be followed all the way from their collection in the field to their publication as engravings with explanatory text.

Abstract

The research on fossil bones by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) is an instructive example of the making of scientific knowledge in the indoor setting of a museum. The trajectory of his specimens can be followed all the way from their collection in the field to their publication as engravings with explanatory text. Cuvier's resources at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris were greatly enlarged by his accumulation of a “paper museum”. He appealed to other naturalists to send him accurate drawings of fossil bones. These functioned as paper “proxies” for specimens that in reality remained elsewhere. Such visual “mobiles” were far from immutable, however, because they were transformed not only by the processes of drawing and engraving but also by Cuvier's use of visual rhetoric: he made them give persuasive support to his zoological and geological interpretations of fossil bones.