Dr. Jean-Claude RAGE – an appreciation

Fig. 1 Jean-Claude Rage climbing a rope ladder during a palaeontological excavation campaign in Quercy (southwestern France) in 1976 (photo EB). Jean-Claude Rage has been recognized for several decades as one of the leading and international experts in the field of palaeontology, which he largely contributed to develop and which could be called “micro-palaeoherpetology”. As an introduction to a collection of papers in his honour, this short biographical sketch, authored by two colleagues of Jean-Claude (one of whom also is a former PhD student of his) is meant to convey our appreciation of his remarkable scientific and personal achievements. Jean-Claude Rage is currently Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) and is based at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He is married to Pr. Agnes Lauriat-Rage (an expert on fossil molluscs and retired MNHN Professor). Jean-Claude was born on 1st March, 1943 at Lyon, France. After attending high school at Saint-Etienne, in central France, he returned to Lyon in 1963 to study at the university, while keeping links with Saint-Etienne, where he worked as an auxiliary teacher until 1965. He became assistant reader at the University of Lyon (1965-1968), where he obtained his Master Degree in 1967. His third cycle thesis (“these de 3eme cycle” – a now defunct French degree) on Quaternary anurans, prepared under the supervision of Prof. Louis David, was defended in 1968. Then Jean-Claude left (temporarily) fossil amphibians (and the city of Lyon) for reptiles (and the city of Paris), where he defended in 1976 his Ph-D (“Doctorat d'Etat”) on snake anatomy, origins and evolution, under the supervision of Prof. Robert Hoffstetter (University Paris 6). Jean-Claude's long association with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) began in 1968, when he obtained a temporary position there, which soon turned …