In 1840, d'Orbigny started the methodical description of French fossils and published La Paléontologie Française (8 vols).
In 1853 he became professor of palaeontology at the Paris Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, publishing his Cours élémentaire that related paleontology to zoology, as a science independent of the uses made of it in stratigraphy [REF].