Deshayes, Gérard Paul (M. G. P.); Description de coquilles caractéristiques des terrains par M.G.P. Deshayes. Paris. Chez F.G. Levrault. Strasbourg - Bruxelles. 1831. Octavo, pp. vii, 264, 14 plates of fossils
The book is complete and in a contemporary calf over marbled boards with gilt spine titles and panels and marbled end sheets. The binding is tight, light rubbing to boards and spine. The text is clean with minor foxing to some page and plate margins only. In very good condition.
Gerard Paul Deshayes (1795-1875) was a French geologist and conchologist. He studied medicine but pursued a career in geology and conchology. He gave private lessons on geology, and soon became professor of natural history in the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle.
He is best known for his researches on the fossil mollusca of the Paris Basin and the Cenozoic. His studies on the relations of the fossil to the recent species of Mollusca led him to working with Charles Lyell and the acceptance of the Tertiary system and its division into the Eocene, Miocene and the Pliocene.
