ABSTRACT
The naturalist Georges Cuvier arrived in Paris in 1795, at the age of 25, soon after the end of the Terror had made the city a highly congenial environment for any ambitious young man of science; and he was appointed to a junior position at the recently reformed Museum d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1798 Cuvier had his portrait painted, and chose a design that epitomised his ambitions for a career as a museum naturalist. Research on fossil bones could logically be said to begin in the field, where specimens are found. But Cuvier himself was not there, or only rarely. Cuvier's unanticipated research project on fossil bones entailed exploiting the riches of the Museum in Paris. Many new specimens arrived in a way at Cuvier's working space at the Museum. Some of Cuvier's papers on fossil bones depended heavily or even exclusively on proxies rather than real specimens.
