Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (1831–1898) was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 zoologist, explorer and writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, born in Cartagena, Spain

Cartagena, Spain

Cartagena is a Spanish city and a major naval station located in the Region of Murcia, by the Mediterranean coast, south-eastern Spain. As of January 2011, it has a population of 218,210 inhabitants being the Region’s second largest municipality and the country’s 6th non-Province capital...

, although he spent most of his life in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, where he died. He is known for participating in the Pacific Scientific Commission, with whom he traveled America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 from 1862 to 1865. He also published several works on geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 and history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 of the American continent.

Biography

The son of a politician, Jiménez de la Espada had to move several times during his childhood

Childhood

Childhood is the age span ranging from birth to adolescence. In developmental psychology, childhood is divided up into the developmental stages of toddlerhood , early childhood , middle childhood , and adolescence .- Age ranges of childhood :The term childhood is non-specific and can imply a...

 and youth

Youth

Youth is the time of life between childhood and adulthood . Definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary. An individual's actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age, as immature individuals could exist at all ages.-Usage:Around the world, the terms "youth",...

, studying in Valladolid

Valladolid

Valladolid is a historic city and municipality in north-central Spain, situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three wine-making regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales...

, Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 and Sevilla.

In 1850, he started a career in Natural Sciences in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, finishing five years later with the work "The Blainville Amphibians and the Cuvier Batracians form a class apart". The study and taxonomy

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

 of the amphibians would be a recurring theme in his scientific work afterwards.

Two years after finishing his career, he got his first job as an assistant in the Natural History

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 department of the university. He also got another job in 1857, also as an assistant, in the Natural Science Museum of the Court (now Natural Science Museum of Madrid.) In both cases, his research work (that lasted 7 years) centered in zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 and compared anatomy. However, it must be said that his positions at the museum were never that important (except at the end of his life), due to the fall from grace of his master and director, Mariano de la Paz Graells, in 1867.

Zoology

During all his American adventure, Jiménez de la Espada recollected all kinds of animals that he not only studied, but he also sent alive to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. Before going in the expedition he worked several years in the preparation of foreign animals in the Botanical Garden

Botanical garden

A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...

 of Madrid, always under Graells tutelage. With the acquired experience, it wasn't hard for him to do the same with the many species of mammals, birds, and reptiles that, until then, had never been taken to Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 (like the Mara

Mara (mammal)

The maras are a genus of the cavy family. They are the sole representatives of the subfamily Dolichotinae. These large relatives of guinea pigs are common in the Patagonian steppes of Argentina but live in other areas of South America as well such as Paraguay...

 of the Patagonia

Patagonia

Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...

, the South American Condor, and the Guanaco.) Many descendants of this animals would later be granted to several European zoos, which would garner Jiménez the First Class Medal of Mammal Division by the Société impériale zoologique d'acclimatation of France

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...

, on March 23, 1866.

He spent six years dedicated exclusively to the study and re-ordering of materials picked during the expedition, which he would include in his future works. In 1870, he published the article Some new and curious facts about the Amazonian fauna in a bulletin

Bulletin

Bulletin can refer to:Periodicals * The Bulletin, a now defunct Australian magazine* The Bulletin , an alternative weekly published in Montgomery County, Texas, United States...

 for the Universidad de Madrid. In this work, he described, among other things, the look and behavior of the Thyroptera albiventer bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

. In 1871, he published the report Unknown Species of the Neo-tropical Fauna in the Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

 Science Academy Journal, and that same year he founded with other colleagues the Spanish Society of Natural History, where he would publish most of his further works.

He was already a referenced author in Europe when he published his greatest work in the field of zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

: Batracious: Vertebraes from the Pacific trip, written after the exhaustive study of 786 species recollected during his trip. In the work, published in 1875 and re-edited in 1978, he described a total of 18 genera

Genera

Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...

 and species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 already known, as well as 2 genera, 12 species and 3 subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 previously unknown at that time. The article not only describes the species from an anatomical point of view, but also covers their biology and behavior. Most known is his conclusion about the frog Rhinoderma darwinii, which he debated the erroneous idea that its gestation process occurred in his mouth, as opposed to putting eggs which it later incubated in its mouth, as he proved. This complex study is considered nowadays, a classic in zoologic literature.

Geography, History, and Anthropology

Despite being at the climax of his zoologist prestige, Jiménez de la Espada put his scientific work at hold and devoted himself to the study of geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 and American history. In 1876, he founded the Geographic Society of Madrid, and in 1883, he entered the History Academy. From there, he directed the re-edition of works of great medieval and modern travelers like Pero Tafur and the Jesuit, Bernabé Cobo

Bernabé Cobo

Bernabé Cobo was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer. He played a part in the early history of quinine by his description of cinchona bark; he brought some to Europe on a visit in 1632....

, and the works of pre-Hispanic Perú

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 from Pedro Cieza de León

Pedro Cieza de León

Pedro Cieza de León was a Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru. He is known primarily for his history and description of Peru, Crónicas del Perú...

 and Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...

. From 1881 to 1897 he published four volumes of his work Geographic Relations of the Indies, which garnered him the Loubat prize from the History Academy.

He participated in congresses in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, Madrid, Turín

Turín

Turín is a municipality in the Ahuachapán department of El Salvador....

, Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. His work in favor of the divulgation of the Inca culture won him the Gold Medal from the Government of Perú. He was also made a member of various international societies. In 1895, he was named president of the Spanish Society of Natural History, which he founded.

Curiously, he didn't present his doctoral thesis

Thesis

A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

 until April 1898, three months before he was named cathedratic of compared anatomy and six months before his death. His death truncated the ample study that he was preparing about the maritime expedition of Alessandro Malaspina

Alessandro Malaspina

Alessandro Malaspina was an Italian nobleman who spent most of his life as a Spanish naval officer and explorer...

 in the 18th century. Francisco Giner de los Ríos

Francisco Giner de los Ríos

Francisco Giner de los Ríos was a philosopher, educator and one of the most influential Spanish intellectuals at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century....

and other friends presented him as a symbol of Spanish scientific regenerationism during a posthumous ceremony in his honor.