Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest (March 6, 1784 – June 4, 1838) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 zoologist and author. He was the son of Nicolas Desmarest

Nicolas Desmarest

Nicolas Desmarest was a French geologist.Desmarest was born at Soulaines, in the department of Aube. Of humble parentage, he was educated at the college of the Oratorians of Troyes and Paris. Taking full advantage of the instruction he received, he was able to support himself by teaching, and to...

 and father of Anselme Sébastien Léon Desmarest. Desmarest was a disciple of Georges Cuvier

Georges Cuvier

Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...

 and Alexandre Brongniart

Alexandre Brongniart

Alexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris...

, and in 1815, he succeeded Pierre André Latreille

Pierre André Latreille

Pierre André Latreille was a French zoologist, specialising in arthropods. Having trained as a Roman Catholic priest before the French Revolution, Latreille was imprisoned, and only regained his freedom after recognising a rare species he found in the prison, Necrobia ruficollis...

 to the professorship of zoology at the .

Desmarest published (1805), (1825), (1820) and (1816–30, with André Marie Constant Duméril

André Marie Constant Duméril

André Marie Constant Duméril was a French zoologist. He was professor of anatomy at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle from 1801 to 1812, when he became professor of herpetology and ichthyology...

).