Cretaceous Bivalves and Alcide d’Orbigny

The main publications on Cretaceous Bivalves of Alcide d’Orbigny are the Paléontologie française – Terrains crétacés. III. Lamellibranches (1843–1847) and the Prodrome de stratigraphie universelle , vol. II (1850). The importance and influence of these publications for today’s taxonomic palaeontology are discussed. It is shown that the Paléontologie française continues to be one of the major 19th-century papers but that the Prodrome is only rarely referred to.