Marcos Jiménez de la Espada

Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (1831–1898) was a Spanish zoologist, herpetologist, explorer and writer, born in Cartagena, Spain, although he spent most of his life in Madrid, where he died. He is known for participating in the Pacific Scientific Commission, with whom he traveled America from 1862 to 1865. He also published several works on geography and history of the American continent.

The son of a politician, Jiménez de la Espada had to move several times during his childhood and youth, studying in Valladolid, Barcelona 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 of the amphibians would be a recurring theme in his scientific work afterwards.

Two years after earning his degree, he got his first job as an assistant in the Natural history 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 (which lasted 7 years) centered on zoology and comparative anatomy. However, it must be said that his positions at the museum were never very important (except at the end of his life), due to the fall from grace of his teacher and advisor, Mariano de la Paz Graells, in 1867.

During all his American adventure, Jiménez de la Espada collected many kinds of animals that he not only studied, but also sent alive to Madrid. Before going on the expedition he worked several years in the preparation of foreign animals in the Botanical Garden of Madrid, always under Graells's tutelage. With the acquired experience, it was not 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. (These include mara of Patagonia, the South American condor, and the guanaco.) Many descendants of this animals would later be given to European zoos, which would garner Jiménez the First Class Medal of Mammal Division by the Société impériale zoologique d'acclimatation of France, on 23 March 1866.

...
Wikipedia