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.