Philippe Taquet

Philippe Taquet (25 April 1940 – 16 November 2025) was a French paleontologist who specialised in dinosaur systematics of finds primarily in northern Africa.^[1]

Taquet in 2013

Life and career

Taquet was a member of the French Academy of Sciences beginning on 30 November 2004,^[1] and president from 2012. He studied and described a number of new dinosaur species from Africa, especially from the Aptian site of Gadoufaoua in Niger (such as Ouranosaurus).^[2] He also researched the Lower Cretaceous stratigraphic relationship between western Africa and Brazil by reconstructing the paleobiology from fossil floras and faunas.^[1] He was president of the French National Museum of Natural History from 1985 to 1990.^[1]

He received the Sue Tyler Friedman Medal in 2009 for work in the history of geology.^[3]

Taquet died on 16 November 2025, at the age of 85.^[4]