Gaudry, Jean Albert
GAUDRY, JEAN ALBERT (1827-1908), French geologist and palaeontologist, was born at St Germain-en-Laye on the 16th of September 1827, and was educated at the college, Stanislas. At the age of twenty-five he made explorations in Cyprus and Greece, residing in the latter country from 1855 to 1860. He then investigated the rich deposit of fossil vertebrata at Pikermi and brought to light a remarkable mammalian fauna, Miocene in age, and intermediate in its forms between European, Asiatic and African types. He also published an account of the geology of the island of Cyprus (Mém. Soc. Géol. de France, 1862). In 1853, while still in Cyprus, he was appointed assistant to A. d'Orbigny, who was the first to hold the chair of palaeontology in the museum of natural history at Paris. In 1872 he succeeded to this important post; in 1882 he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1900 he presided over the meetings of the eighth International Congress of Geology then held in Paris. He died on the 27th of November 1908. He is distinguished for his researches on fossil mammalia, and for the support which his studies have rendered to the theory of evolution.
Publications. - Animaux fossiles et géologie de l'Attique (2 vols., 1862-1867); Cours de paléontologie (1873); Animaux fossiles du Mont Lebéron (1873); Les Enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques (Mammifères Tertiaires, 1878; Fossiles primaires, 1883; Fossiles secondaires, 1890); Essai de paléontologie philosophique (1896). Brief memoir with portrait in Geol. Mag. (1903), p. 49.
(H. B. W.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
