Auguste Bravard

Infobox Scientist
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name = Auguste Bravard


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birth_date = Birth date|1803|6|18
birth_place = Issoire, France
death_date = Death date and age|1861|3|28|1803|6|18
death_place = Mendoza, Argentina
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fields = Paleontology
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footnotes = Biographical dates from K. Lambrecht, Werner Quenstedt, Claude C. Albritton, Jr, "Palaeontologi: catalogus bio-bibliographicus" (1938), reprinted 1978, "s.v." "Auguste Bravard". ] Bravard died during an earthquake at Mendoza, according to Juan José Parodiz, "Darwin in the New World" 1981:117.]

(Pierre Joseph) Auguste Bravard (18 June 1803 – 28 March 1861) was a French mining engineer turned palaeontologist who, having hunted fossils in the Vaucluse, Allier and his native Puy de Dôme [Lambrecht, Quenstedt 1938; Bravard, " Monographie de la montagne de Perrier près d'Issoire (Puy-de-Dôme), et de deux espèces fossiles du genre Felis découvertes dans l'une de ses couches d'alluvion", Paris 1828.] emigrated to Argentina in the winter of 1852-53 and was a long-term resident in Buenos Aires, where he unearthed and studied mammalian fossils, some of which, like the skull of "Mesotherium" he sent back to the Musée d'histoire naturelle, Paris. Pleistocene mammal fossils purchased from Bravard are also in the Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, London, transferred from the British Museum, ["British Museum" according to Lambrecht, Quenstedt 1938.] which had purchased them from Bravard in 1854. ["The History of the Collections Contained in the Natural History Departments of the British Museum", "s.v." "1854" (reprinted Adamant Media, 2000).] Bravard, who became director of the natural history museum in Paraná, upheld geological theories contrary to those of Charles Darwin. ["Bravard's discoveries seem to me magnificent, & especially interesting is the fact of Palæotherium Paranense, taken with (I think) the Nebraska Palæotherium. Bravard has sent me two Spanish pamphlets (which I find to my surprise I can hardly translate) in which he has strange geological doctrine, of whole enormous Pampean deposit being a subaerial deposit. He disputes the coembedment of the Bahia Blanca fossils with recent shells; but I am by no means convinced. It seems to me impossible that a whole skeleton, (even to knee-cap) could be washed out of one formation & embedded in another & that other formation a turbulent one with largish pebbles & cross layers. (Darwin to Charles Lyell, 15 February 1860 ().]

From Buenos Aires he explored in Bahia Blanca, resulting in his "Mapa geológico y topográfico de los alrededores de Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires" (1857), [Henry B. Sullivan, "A Catalogue of Geological Maps of South America: With an index map," cat. no. 143a (1922:185).] in the Paraná basin and in the pampas.

Periodically Bravard lithographed his letters and distributed them to geologists in Europe. [A lithographed circular received from Bravard is remarked in Charles Lyell's letter of 13-14 February 1860 to Charles Darwin, ( [http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-2694.html Darwin Correspondence Project: on-line] ).]

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 made over to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Buenos Aires. [Parodiz 1981:117.]

At Issoire, he is commemorated in the rue August Bravard.

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