Éliane Basse

Éliane Basse or Éliane Basse de Ménorval (21 May 1899 – 28 January 1985) was a French paleontologist and geologist who became research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research in 1960.

Life A student at the École normale supérieure in Sèvres for three years. She became professor-head of laboratory at the Lycée de Troyes and then was a doctoral fellow at the French National Museum of Natural History for two years.

She earned a doctorate in science and was named Scientific Director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (often abbreviated CNRS) and associate professor of natural sciences.

Research To research her doctoral thesis, Basse left for the island of Madagascar as project manager for the Museum of Natural History and was attached to the local mining service (1930–1932). She continued her research there in an area approximately bounded by Sikili, Mangoky River, and Ménamaty, which is the area where the town of Ankazoabo is located today in the southwestern part of the island. She traveled in these regions alone with Bara porters, a Malagasy surveyor and a Hetsiléo cook. After returning to Paris, she defended her thesis in 1935 about plant groups in southwestern Madagascar, earning her Ph.D.

Associations She was made an honorary member of the Palaeontological Society of India in 1956.

General government of Madagascar and dependencies. Department of Mines. Paleontological monograph of the Cretaceous of the province of Maintirano, Madagascar. Antananarivo: Official printing house, 1931 Theses presented to the Faculty of Sciences of Paris to obtain the degree of doctor of natural sciences. Plant groups of South-West Madagascar... Paris: Masson, 1934 Macrocephalitides from southwestern Madagascar: macrocephalitidae, eucycloceratidae, mayaitidae. Crops from the É mission. Basse, 1930-31. Paris: [Sn], 1951 (co-author) Notes of the excursion. Quaternaire Année 1964 1-1 pp. 16–17, 1964. Fossils: evolution of the structures of living matter. Paris: University Press of France, 1968

Eponymy Gervillia elianae Cox, 1936, a Permian bivalve species known from Tanzania and Madagascar, was named in her honour. She had collected a part of the type material.