Career
Wagner was a professor at the University of Munich, and curator of the Zoologische Staatssammlung (State Zoology Collection). He was the author of Die Geographische Verbreitung der Säugethiere Dargestellt (1844-1846). In his travels to the fossil beds of, he discovered and described fossil remains of Mastodon, Dinotherium, Hipparion, two species of Giraffe, Antelope and others
His collaboration with Johannes Roth on these fossils became a major textbook in palaeontology, known as "Roth & Wagner", in which the "bones were much broken, and no complete skeleton was found with all the parts united".