Los médicos de muertos y la Paleontología en el Plata. Medicina legal, cirugía militar y observación de campo en la obra de Francisco X. Muñiz, 1830-1850

Abstract

The papers and notes by physician Francisco Muñiz, if read as a compilation originated in the forms of bureocracy, reveal a pattern in the description of nature that is shaped by the protocols of the administration of justice. We argue that this case displays the constellations where vertebrate palaontology would emerge as a new discipline, i.e. the intersection of comparative anatomy, military surgery, and forensic medicine.