(Pierre Joseph) Auguste Bravard (18 June 1803 – 28 March 1861) was a French mining engineer turned

palaeontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

. He hunted fossils in the

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.

, Allier and his native Puy de Dôme.

Biography

Bravard emigrated to

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

in the winter of 1852–53 and was a long-term resident in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

. He unearthed and studied

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

ian fossils, some of which, like the skull of '' Mesotherium'', were sent back to the Muséum d'histoire naturelle, Paris.

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

mammal fossils purchased from Bravard are also in the Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, London, transferred from the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, which had purchased them from Bravard in 1854. Bravard, who became director of the natural history museum in Paraná, upheld geological theories contrary to those of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

. From Buenos Aires, he explored in

Bahía Blanca Bahía Blanca (; English: ''White Bay''), colloquially referred to by its own local inhabitants as simply Bahía, is a city in the Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires province of Argentina, centered on the northwestern end of the eponymous Blanc ...

, resulting in his ''Mapa geológico y topográfico de los alrededores de Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires'' (1857). He also explored the Paraná basin and the

pampas The Pampas (; from Quechua 'plain'), also known as the Pampas Plain, are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all o ...

. Periodically Bravard

lithograph Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...

ed his letters and distributed them to geologists in Europe. After his unexpected death in the Mendoza earthquake of 1861, his remarkable collection of fossils disappeared. At the turn of the twentieth century, an auction of unclaimed crates by the Buenos Aires customs office revealed the collection, which was handed over to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Buenos Aires.Parodiz 1981:117. At Issoire, he is commemorated in the rue August Bravard.

Works

* ''Catalogue des especes d'animaux fossiles recuilies dans I'Amerique du Sud'' (1852-1856) * ''Observaciones geológicas sobre diferentes terrenos de transporte de la hoya del Plata'' (1857) * ''Estado físico del territorio. Geología de las Pampas'' (1858) * ''Carta geológica de la Provincia de Entre Ríos'' (1858)
''Monografía de los terrenos marinos terciarios de las cercanías del Paraná'' (1858)

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bravard, Auguste 1803 births 1861 deaths People from Issoire French paleontologists French emigrants to Argentina French mining engineers People from Buenos Aires Deaths in earthquakes Natural disaster deaths in Argentina