Translations of the original descriptions of Sebastes by Georges Cuvier Descriptions of Sebastes by Georges Cuvier

"The speciose scorpaenid genus Sebastes has a long history of taxonomic confusion, the initial stages of which are dealt with in Fernholm and Wheeler (1983). Cuvier (1829) recognized that Linnaeus (1761) had combined two quite different species of fish in his description of Seruanus marina. Partly as a result of this recognition, Cuvier (1829) erected a nev/ genus, Sebastes, for the more northerly occurring of the two Linnaean species. He realized that this new genus was more closely related to the scorpaeniforms than to the perciforms, which included Serranus. Cuvier's initial description of Sebastes was quite brief (Cuvier, 1829), but later in the same year, he coauthored a much more extensive description of the genus, and included species from the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the South Atlantic Ocean, the western and northern Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean (Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1829). Some of these have proven to be representatives of other genera. Included here are translations from the French of both Cuvier's initial (1829) and more extensive (Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1829) descriptions of Sebastes. In the translations, translator's notes are in brackets and the use of italics for scientific names and capitalization of generic names follow modern convention. Footnote numbers increment throughout the translations; they were numbered for each page in the originals. The figure of Sebastes from the original description (Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1829: Plate 87) is reproduced by permission of Asher Rare Books, the Netherlands"--Introduction. translated by Abby J. Simpson ; compiled by Arthur W. Kendall, Jr. and James Wilder Orr. "December 2000"--Cover. Also available online in PDF format via AFSC and the NOAA Central Library. Includes bibliographical references. 2000 NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) AFSC (Alaska Fisheries Science Center) Library Public Domain 1930