Joachim BarrandeBorn 11 Aug 1799; died 5 Oct 1883 at age 84.French geologist and paleontologist. He settled in Prague (1832), at first as an engineer. While surveying the proposed route for a horse-drawn railway, he became interested in the local fossil-bearing rocks there. From 1840, he turned to the study of these fossils in the strata of the central Bohemian basin. In his lifetime, he gathered some 3500 species of graptolites, brachiopoda, mollusca, trilobites and fishes, showing a wide variety of life forms in the Early Paleozoic era. (The Paleozoic era spanned 540-245 million years ago.) He meticulously recorded his findings in Système silurien du centre de la Bohême, which remains a fine reference work. The first volume was published in 1852, and was followed by 20 more in his lifetime. He opposed Darwin's theory of evolution, instead advocating the theory of catastrophes.« |
