Beneden, Pierre Joseph van; Description des Ossements Fossiles des Environs dAnvers. Quatrieme partie: Cetaces Genres: Plesiocetus. Annales du Musée Royal d'Histoire Naturelle de Belgique, Bruxelles, F. Hayez, Imprimeur de L'Academie Royale de Belgique, Brussels, 1885. Small folio text and elephant folio atlas. Text, pp. 40, atlas, 30 plates (some double page).
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The work is complete and in the original blue stiff title boards. The bindings are tight with light archival repairs on the spines and light cover soiling. Inner hinges tightened with early South American library stamp on title pages, from the library of Florentino Ameghino. Light foxing to some text and plate margins. Over all a very scarce work in very good condition.
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A Belgian vertebrate paleontologist and zoologist with the University of Louvain; Benedan (1809-1893) studied medicine at the University of Louvain, and studied zoology in Paris under Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). In 1831 he became curator at the natural history museum at the University of Louvain and from 1836 until 1894 was a professor of zoology at the Catholic University at Louvain. His early work was in parasitology and he was the first scientist to describe the life cycle of the tapeworm. His interest in vertebrate paleontology began during the excavation for the fortification of Antwerp when the bones of a large number of cetaceans were discovered. This led to his pioneering contributions to the study of the mammalian fossils of the Antwerp Basin and a detailed study of the cetaceans, whose characteristics were at that time were not well known. With the French zoologist Paul Gervais (1816–1879), he published an important work on extinct and living cetaceans titled Ostéographie des Cétacés, vivants et fossiles. This was followed with a major five part work published in the "Annales du musée royal d'histoire naturelle de Belgique".