Illustrative plate depicting the jaws, tusks, and grinders of the mastodon, from Cuvier’s Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1818).
Featured on PDR in the essay Dr Mitchill and the Mathematical Tetrodon
One of the early Republic's great polymaths, New Yorker Samuel L. Mitchill was a man with a finger in many a pie, including medicine, science, natural history, and politics. Dr Kevin Dann argues that Mitchill's peculiar brand of curiosity can best be seen in his study of fish and the attention he gives one seemingly unassuming specimen.