Description: (Zoologist, Herpetologist)
Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti was an Austrian naturalist and zoologist of Italian origin known for his significant contributions to the field of herpetology. He is credited with being the auctor of the class Reptilia through his work "Specimen Medicum", which provided a detailed and influential analysis of reptiles and amphibians, defining thirty genera of reptiles. Laurenti's research on the poisonous function of reptiles and amphibians was groundbreaking, and his description of the blind salamander Proteus anguinus was one of the earliest published accounts of a cave-dwelling animal in the western world.