George Cuvier Quotations

In my work on Fossil Bones, I set myself the task of identifying the animals whose fossilized remains fill the surface strata of the earth.

All solid parts of the earth therefore owe their origin to living things, and without that life the earth would be still entirely liquid.

No doubt, the European traveler does not easily cross the vast extents of territory, deserted or supporting only ferocious peoples.

Thus, life on this earth has often been disturbed by dreadful events. Innumerable living creatures have been victims of these catastrophes.

We know that in the midst of such variations in the nature of the liquid, the animals which it nourished could not have stayed the same.

The pole of the earth moves in a circle around the pole of the ecliptic; its axis inclines more or less on the plane of this same ecliptic.