8th century[edit]

 1700? Discovery of the platypus in Australia.

 1700. Félix de Azara (Spanish) estimated the feral herds of cattle on the South American
pampas at 48 million animals. These animals probably descended from herds introduced by the
Jesuits some 100 years earlier. (North America and Australia were to follow in this pattern,
where feral herds of cattle and mustangs would explode, become pests, and reform the frontier
areas.)

Ants, spiders and hummingbird. Plate from Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensis

 1705. Maria Sybilla Merian (German, 1647–1717) wrote and beautifully illustrated

her Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensis (Veranderingen der Surinaamsche Insecten)
(1705). In this book she stated that Fulgora lanternaria was luminous.
 1730? Sir Hans Sloane (English (born Ireland), 1660–1753) was a founder of the British
Museum.
 1734–1742. René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (French, 1683–1756) was an early
entomologist. His Mémoires pour servir ... l'histoire des insectes (6 volumes) shows the best of
zoological observation at the time. He invented the glass-fronted bee hive.
 1740. Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist, discovered the hydra which he considered to
combine both animal and plant characteristics. His Mémoires pour Servir ... l'Histoire d'un Genre
de Polypes d'Eau Douce ... Bras en Terme de Cornes (1744) showed that freshwater polyps
of Hydra could be sectioned or mutilated and still reform. Regeneration soon became a topic of
inquiry among Réaumur, Bonnet, Spallanzini and others.
 1745. Charles Bonnet (French-Swiss, 1720–1793) wrote Traité d'Insectologie (1745)
and Contemplation de la nature (1732). He confirmed parthenogenesis of aphids.
 1745. Pierre Louis M. de Maupertuis (French, 1698–1759) went to Lapland to measure
the arc of the meridian (1736–1737). Maupertuis was a Newtonian. He generated family trees
for inheritable characteristics (e.g., haemophilia in European royal families) and showed
inheritance through both the male and female lines. He was an early evolutionist and head of the
Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1744 he proposed the theory that molecules from all parts of the
body were gathered into the gonads (later called "pangenesis"). Vénus physique was published
anonymously in 1745. Maupertuis wrote Essai de cosmologie in which he suggests a survival of
the fittest concept: "Could not one say that since, in the accidental combination of Nature's
productions, only those could survive which found themselves provided with certain appropriate
 relationships, it is no wonder that these relationships are present in all the species that actually
exist? These species which we see today are only the smallest part of those which a blind
destiny produced."
 1748. John Tuberville Needham, an English naturalist, wrote Observations upon the
Generation, Composition, and Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances in which he
offers "proof" of spontaneous generation. Needham found flasks of broth teeming with "little
animals" after having boiled them and sealed them, but his experimental techniques were faulty.
 1748–1751. Peter Kalm (Swede) was a naturalist and student of Linnaeus. He traveled in
North America (1748–1751).

Statue of Buffon in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

 1749–1804. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (French, 1707–1788) wrote Histoire

Naturelle (1749–1804 in 44 vols.) that had a great impact on zoology. He asserted that species
were mutable. Buffon also drew attention to vestigial organs. He held that spermatozoa were
"living organic molecules" that multiplied in the semen.
 1758. Albrecht von Haller (Swiss, 1708–1777) was one of the founders of modern
physiology. His work on the nervous system was revolutionary. He championed animal
physiology, along with human physiology. See his textbook Elementa Physiologiae Corporis
Humani (1758).
 1758. Carl Linnaeus (Swedish, 1707–1778) published the Systema Naturae whose tenth
edition (1758) is the starting point of binomial nomenclature for zoology.
 1759. Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733–1794) wrote Theoria Generationis (1759) that disagreed
with the idea of preformation. He supported the doctrine of epigenesis. A youthful follower of the
German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716), Wolff sought to resolve the
problem of hybrids (mule, hinny, apemen) in his epigenesis, since these could not be well
explained by performation.
 1768. Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) and Daniel Solander (1733–1782) sailed with Captain
James Cook (English, 1728–1779) on the H.M.S. Endeavour for the South Seas (Tahiti), until
1771.
Route of the First voyage of James Cook

 1769. Edward Bancroft (English) wrote An Essay on the Natural History of Guyana in South

America (1769) and advanced the theory that flies transmit disease.
 1771. Johann Reinhold Forster (German, 1729–1798) was the naturalist on Cook's second
voyage around the world (1772–1775). He published a Catalogue of the Animals of North
America (1771) as an addendum to Kalm's Travels. He also studied the birds of Hudson Bay.