Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo was born on 7 December 1857 in Lille, France, to an old Breton family. He trained as an engineer at the École centrale de Lille, graduating in 1877, before a growing passion for paleontology led him to Brussels in 1879.[1]
From 1878 Dollo supervised the excavation of the famous multiple Iguanodon skeletons found at Bernissart, Belgium, and from 1882 -- as head of the vertebrate fossil section of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences -- he directed their reconstruction and mounting on their hind legs, producing twelve mounted skeletons that remain a centerpiece of Brussels' Museum of Natural Sciences.[1]
Around 1890 Dollo proposed that evolution is not reversible, a hypothesis now known as Dollo's law. Together with Austrian scientist Othenio Abel, he helped found the field of paleobiology, treating fossil animals as part of living ecosystems rather than isolated specimens. He taught paleontology at the Free University of Brussels from 1909 and received the Murchison Medal in 1912. Dollo died on 19 April 1931.[1]