Le rôle des exploitations minières de la région d’Autun dans la constitution des collections paléontologiques

The birth of the oil shale industry, in the Autun basin (Saône-et-Loire, department in Burgundy), at the beginning of the 1830s, corresponded to a time during which the scientific progress in geology and paleontology was quite fast-paced. The development of the schist industry happened at a time when landmark works were published such as those by Louis Agassiz or Adolphe Brongniart. These scientists relied upon the on-going findings in the Autunois area. An outstanding dynamics was on its way. It brought about the updating of many samples sparking off important paleontological studies. A remarkable coordination set up between the industrial workers of the schist industry, the local scholars on the one hand and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris on the other hand. There resulted from it a frequent if not constant interest in the discovery of the fossils that the layers of schists – exploited with the aim of obtaining oil used as a quaffing product – can contain. This dynamics kept going on till the beginning of the 19th century. It was carried out by outstanding personalities such as Bernard Renault or Auguste Roche who were at the origin of the first collections gathered by the Society of Natural History in Autun, founded in 1886. But then, the findings were made rare. The mechanization of the chopping down and crushing of the schist did not any more offer the suitable conditions to discover new specimens. Anyway, the accumulated collections are already considerable and make of the Autunois one of the major places of great French paleontological progress in the years 1870 and 1880.