John Jeremiah BigsbyBorn 14 Aug 1792; died 10 Feb 1881 at age 88. English physician and geologist who spent most of his career in Canada and the United States, studying and writing on the geology and uncovering many new species of ancient life represented in the palaeozoic fossils he found there. His first contribution to American geology appeared in a paper in Silliman's Journal in 1820. Bigsby's best-known works are Thesaurus Siluricus (1868), his “master-roll” of the flora and fauna of the Silurian period and Thesaurus Devonico-Carboniferus (1878). He wrote of his six years travelling throughout Canada in a two-volume book, The Shoe and Canoe (1850), describing the scenery and society he saw in “this romantic and fertile part of North America”.«Image: Fossil of the trilobite Arctinurus boltoni classified by Bigsby in 1825. |
