Background

Desnoyers was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou, in the department of Eure-et-Loir.

Career

Becoming interested in geology at an early age, Desnoyers was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France in 1830. In 1834 he was appointed librarian of the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

His separate books were Sur la Craie et sur les terrains tertiaires du Cotentin (1825), Recherches géologiques et historiques sur les cavernes (1845).

Achievements

• His contributions to geological science comprised memoirs on the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of the Paris Basin and of Northern France, and other papers relating to the antiquity of man, and to the question of his co-existence with extinct mammalia.