Cuvier showed that animals possess so many diverse anatomical traits that they could not be arranged in a single linear system.
Instead, he arranged animals into four large groups—vertebrates, mollusks, articulates, and radiates—each of which had a special type of anatomical organization.
In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events.
In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century.
In the first half of the 19th century, the French naturalist Georges Cuvier developed his theory of catastrophes.
Accordingly, fossils show that animal and plant species are destroyed time and again by deluges and other natural cataclysms, and that new species evolve only after that.
Learn more about Georges Cuvier theory here: