French paleontologists

Auguste_Pomel

Nicolas Auguste Pomel (20 September 1821 – 2 August 1898) was a French geologist, paleontologist and botanist. He worked as a mines engineer in Algeria and became a specialist in north African vertebrate fossils. He was Senator of Algeria for Oran from 1876 to 1882.

Ernest_Munier-Chalmas

Ernest Charles Philippe Auguste Munier-Chalmas (7 April 1843 – 9 August 1903) was a French geologist, born at Tournus in Burgundy, who is known for his contributions to the understanding of the Cretaceous, but who also isolated and defined the Priabonian stage of the Late Eocene, in a paper co-written with Albert de Lapparent in 1893.
From 1864 he worked as an assistant in the geology department at the Sorbonne, and subsequently participated in geological missions to Austria-Hungary and the Venetian Alps. From 1882 he taught classes at the École Normale Supérieure, and in 1891 became a professor of geology at the Sorbonne. In addition, from 1892 to 1903, he was director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études.In 1873 he described the bivalve genera Matheronia and Toucasia (family Requieniidae). With paleontologist Charles Schlumberger, he conducted important investigations on sexual dimorphism in Foraminifera.In 1891 he was appointed president of the Société géologique de France. He was elected to the mineralogical section of the French Académie des sciences on 5 May 1903.In 1895, botanist Hermann zu Solms-Laubach published Chalmasia, which is a genus of green algae in the family Polyphysaceae and name in Chalmas's honour.He died in retirement at Aix-les-Bains, Provence.

François_Cyrille_Grand'Eury

François Cyrille Grand'Eury (9 March 1839, Houdreville – 22 July 1917, Malzéville) was a French geologist, paleontologist and mathematics teacher.
He studied at the École Loritz in Nancy and at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, and later worked as a mining engineer in Roche-la-Molière. From 1863 to 1899 he taught classes in mathematics at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, where in 1883 he received the title of professor.From 1877 he was a member of the Société géologique de France and in 1885 was elected a correspondent member of the Académie des Sciences.He is remembered for his stratigraphic research of coal fields and for his investigations involving the formation of coal. He is credited with establishing the chronological succession of floras associated with the coal seams of the Stephanian stage (named after the development of this stage at Saint-Étienne). He conducted exhaustive studies of coal flora (Cordaites, Calamites, et al), and in 1877 described the genus Tubiculites.

Paul_Fallot

Paul Fallot (25 June 1889 in Strasbourg – 21 October 1960 in Paris) was a French geologist and paleontologist. Throughout his career the Mediterranean region, and especially Spain, was the focus of his work.
Fallot began his studies in 1908 at the University of Lausanne, under the well known geologist Maurice Lugeon. In 1909 he moved to Grenoble to work at the laboratory of geologist and paleontologist Wilfred Kilian on ammonites of the Balearic Islands. In 1910-1911 he broadens his knowledge of general geology and stratigraphy at the Sorbonne led with Emile Haug.
From 1914 to 1916 he serves in the French army, which earned him the Croix de Guerre, with five honorable mentions, and the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur Cross.
After the war, Fallot was employed by his former teacher Kilian in Grenoble and continued his work in Mallorca. His "Geological Etude de la Sierra de Majorque" appears in 1922. The next year Paul Fallot was appointed director of the Institute of Applied Geology in Nancy, a position he keeps the next 14 years. With staff and students he worked in the Jura, but his main work he performed in the Betic ranges of southern Spain and the Rif Mountains of North Africa. In 1931 the Academy of Sciences grants Fallot the Grand Prix des Sciences physiques.
His appointment in 1937 as professor of Geology of the Mediterranean at the Collège de France, seemed the opportunity to scale up his work on the tectonics of the entire area with a team of specialists, but the outbreak of World War II hindered this. During the war he stayed in Paris, prepared publications of the Geological Service of Morocco, proposes a comprehensive document together on the geology of subbetische chains and analyzes the layers of the Triassic of Algeria.
In 1948 Paul Fallot was appointed as member of the Académie des Sciences. Fallot was also one of the foreign members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since May 1960. The Lower Cambrian trilobite genus Fallotaspis was named in his honour.

Joseph_Henri_Ferdinand_Douvillé

Joseph Henri Ferdinand Douvillé (16 June 1846 – 19 January 1937), also known as Henri Douvillé, was French paleontologist, geologist and malacologist. Douvillé worked as a mining engineer in Bourges (1872) and Limoges (1874), afterwards serving as professeur suppléant of paleontology at the École des Mines. From 1881 to 1911 he was a professor of paleontology at the École des Mines.

Charles_Depéret

Charles Jean Julien Depéret (25 June 1854 – 18 May 1929) was a French geologist and paleontologist. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Société géologique de France and dean of the Science faculty of Lyon.
Charles Depéret was born in Perpignan. He started his career as a military doctor from 1877 to 1888. Initially posted in Algeria, he was later active in Sathonay. In 1888, he became lecturer at Aix-Marseille University, and in 1889 he became professor of geology at the University of Lyon. He died in Lyon.In 1892 he introduced the Burdigalian Stage (Lower Miocene) based on stratigraphic units found near Bordeaux and in the Rhône Valley. He was an advocate of the controversial prehistoric artifacts findings of Glozel. Along with Edward Drinker Cope, his name is associated with the so-called "Cope-Depéret rule", a law which asserts that in population lineages, body size tends to increase over evolutionary time.

Charles_Eugène_Bertrand

Charles Eugène Bertrand (2 January 1851, in Paris – 18 August 1917) was a French botanist, paleobotanist and geologist. He is remembered for his research involving the formation of coal.
He studied sciences in Paris, where he had as influences botanist Joseph Decaisne and plant physiologist Pierre Paul Deherain. In 1874 he obtained his doctorate in sciences, and was later appointed professor of botany at the University of Lille (1878). From 1881 to 1887, he was head of the Archives botaniques du nord de la France.In 1878 he became a member of the Société botanique de France. He was the father of botanist Paul Charles Édouard Bertrand (1879-1944).

André_Leroi-Gourhan

André Leroi-Gourhan (; French: [ləʁwa guʁɑ̃]; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.