Georges Cuvier died in Paris. A French zoologist and naturalist, he is considered the father of paleontology. Cuvier, who belonged to a Reformed Church, allowed for the truthfulness of the Biblical flood, which he maintained was not the only catastrophic event, but was the last one over a period of “thousands of ages.” As for the origin of the species, he did not make any clear-cut statements regarding it, simply saying, “I would not posit the need for a new Creation to produce the existing species.” However he, as well as Carl Linnaeus, considered the “species” fixed and unchanging (a theory known as “fixism”). Believing the biblical episode of the flood had to be interpreted literally, in analyzing fossil remains he developed the “catastrophe theory.” According to it, the morphology of living things does not depend on a natural procession of events that progress along the line of small variations, but rather through historic leaps that take place with massive catastrophes.