astronomy

Louis Dollo

Louis Dollo is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Louis Dollo rather than just read about it. In short: Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo (French pronunciation: [lwi ɑ̃twan maʁi ʒozɛf dɔlo]; 7 December 1857 – 19 April 1931) was a Belgian palaeontologist, known for his work on dinosaurs. He also posited that evolution is not reversible, known as Dollo's law.

Key takeaways

Louis Dollo belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Louis Dollo to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Louis Dollo from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo (French pronunciation: [lwi ɑ̃twan maʁi ʒozɛf dɔlo]; 7 December 1857 – 19 April 1931) was a Belgian palaeontologist, known for his work on dinosaurs. He also posited that evolution is not reversible, known as Dollo's law. Together with the Austrian Othenio Abel, Dollo established the principles of paleobiology.

Early life Louis Dollo was born in Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, a scion of an old Breton family. He studied at the École centrale de Lille, with geologist Jules Gosselet and zoologist Alfred Giard, both of whom influenced the young Dollo. In 1877, he graduated with a degree in engineering. After his graduation, he worked in the mining industry for five years, but simultaneously developed a passion for paleontology. In 1879, he moved to Brussels.

Iguanodon spp. For three years, starting in 1878, he supervised the excavation of the famous, multiple Iguanodon find at Bernissart, Belgium. He devoted himself to their study as a scientific passion, initially concurrently with his engineering career. In 1882 he became an assistant naturalist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Dollo was given membership in the Société des sciences de Lille and the Geological Society of London. From 1882 to 1885, while he was head of the vertebrate fossil section of the Royal Institute, Dollo worked on reconstructing the skeletons of the iguanodons, as it was necessary to display them on their hind legs. The first one was assembled in the interior of an unused church that Dollo was using as a workshop. Twelve of those skeletons have been the principal attraction of the Museum of Natural Sciences at the Royal Institute. Dollo collaborated with his former professor Alfred Giard and the Université Lille Nord de France.

Dollo's law Around 1890, he formulated a hypothesis on the irreversible nature of evolution, known later as "Dollo's law". According to his hypothesis, a structure or organ lost during the course of evolution would not reappear in that organism. This hypothesis was largely accepted until Michael F. Whiting's 2003 discovery that certain insects that had lost their wings regained them millions of years later. However, it was redeemed on the molecular level in 2009 as a result of a study on glucocorticoid receptors.

Paleobiology Dollo continued his work with fossils, in addition to studies of dinosaurs and their ecology. He was among the first to see fossil animals as part of an ecosystem. Because of that, he was instrumental in the development of paleobiology, and he kept up an extensive correspondence with Othenio Abel, another famous early paleobiologist. He taught paleontology at the Free University of Brussels, beginning in 1909, and in 1912 received the Murchison Medal. Recently, the stochastic Dollo model is being used to analyze matrix of cognates statistically. In linguistics, this model permits a newly coined cognate to arise only once on a tree language.

Works

Animal classifications Hypsilophodontidae, 1882 Boulengerina, 1886 Cryptodira: Eurysternidae, 1886 Iguanodontia: Iguanodon bernissartensis, 1888 Iguanodontia: Iguanodon mantelli, 1888 Prognathodon, 1889 Bathydraconidae Gerlachea australis, 1900 Bathydraconidae Racovitzia glacialis, 1900 Bathydraconidae, 1906 Macrourinae: Cynomacrurus, 1909 Elapidae Dyrosauridae

Literature Dollo, Louis (1882). "Première note sur les dinosauriens de Bernissart". Bulletin du Musée Royal d'Histoire Naturelle de Belgique. 1: 161–180. Dollo, Louis (1883). "Note sur les restes de dinosauriens rencontrés dans le Crétacé Supérieur de la Belgique". Bulletin du Musée Royal d'Histoire Naturelle de Belgique. 2: 205–221. Louis Dollo (1891), "La vie au sein des mers : la faune marine et les grandes profondeurs, les grandes explorations sous marines, les conditions d'existence dans les abysses, la faune abyssale", in: Bibliothèque scientifique contemporaine. Louis Dollo (1892), "Sur le "Lepidosteus suessoniensis", in: Bulletin scientifique de la France et de la Belgique. Louis Dollo (1892), "Sur la morphologie des côtes", in: Bulletin scientifique de la France et de la Belgique. Louis Dollo (1892), "Sur la morphologie de la colonne vertébrale", in: Bulletin scientifique de la France et de la Belgique. Louis Dollo (1899), "Première note sur les mosasauriens de Maestricht", Bulletine. Soc. belge Geol. Pal. Hydr., Vol.4. Louis Dollo (1899), Alfred Giard, "Les ancêtres des Marsupiaux étaient-ils arboricoles ?", Station Zoologique de Wimereux. Louis Dollo (1903), "Les Ancêtres des mosasauriens", in: Bulletin scientifique de la France et de la Belgique. Louis Dollo (1904), Expédition antarctique belge (1897–1899); résultats du voyage du S. Y. Belgica en 1897 – 1898 – 1899 sous le commandement de A. de Gerlache de Gomery; rapports scientifiques : Zoologie : Poissons. Antwerp: J.-E. Buschmann. Dollo, Louis (1905). "Les Dinosauriens adaptés à la vie quadrupède secondaire". Bulletine. Soc. belge Geol. Pal. Hydr. 19: 441–448. Louis Dollo (1910), La Paléontologie éthologique. Translations by Louis Dollo John Tyndall, Les Microbes (1882) Rudolf Hörnes, Manuel de paléontologie (1886) Wilhelm Krause, Manuel d'anatomie humaine (1887–89) Re-published works by Louis Dollo Stephen Jay Gould (1970), "Dollo on Dollo's Law: Irreversibility and the Status of Evolutionary Laws", Journal of the History of Biology / 3, No.2:189–212. Stephen Jay Gould, ed. (1980), Louis Dollo's papers on paleontology and evolution, Original Anthology, New York, Arno Press, 1980 David B. Weishampel and Nadine M. White, eds. (2003) The Dinosaur Papers, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Books. Drinker Cope, Edward (1886). "Schlosser on Creodonta and Phenacodus; Dollo on extinct tortoises". American Naturalist. 20: 965–968.

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Louis Dollo

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Louis Dollo claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Louis Dollo before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Louis Dollo ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Louis Dollo

In research: Louis Dollo appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Louis Dollo in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Louis Dollo is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1857 births, 1931 deaths, Academic staff of the Free University of Brussels (1834–1969), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Louis Dollo outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Louis Dollo in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Louis Dollo means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Louis Dollo out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Louis Dollo in simple terms?

Why does Louis Dollo matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Louis Dollo?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Louis Dollo.