Alfred Duvaucel [SEP] occupation
Alfred Duvaucel
Alfred Duvaucel (1793, Évreux, Eure – 1824, Madras, India) was a French naturalist and explorer. He was the stepson of Georges Cuvier.
Journeys in South and Southeast Asia.
In December 1817, Duvaucel left France for British India and arrived in Calcutta in May 1818, where he met Pierre-Médard Diard. Together, they moved to Chandernagore, then a trading post of the French East India Company, and started collecting animals and plants for the Paris Museum of Natural History.
rat, the large treeshrew and the cream-coloured giant squirrel.
The many drawings, skeletons, skins and other animal parts that Duvaucel sent to the Paris Museum of Natural History included head, skin and paws of a species "from the mountains north of India" that his stepfather's brother Frédéric Cuvier described as "Ailurus fulgens" in 1825.
Alfred Duvaucel is commemorated in the scientific names of a number of species:
- the barasingha "Cervus duvaucelii" — described by his stepfather Georges Cuvier in 1823