Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti

Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti was born on 4 December 1735 in Vienna and died on 17 February 1805, also in Vienna. He was an Austrian naturalist and zoologist from Italy. He studied animals, especially reptiles and amphibians.

Laurenti wrote a book called Specimen Medicum in 1768. This book helped create the science of herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. In his book, he described thirty different groups of reptiles, which was more than what was known before.

One of his descriptions was of a special amphibian called the blind salamander, Proteus anguinus. He said it was found in cave waters in Slovenia or western Croatia. This was one of the first times a cave animal was written about in books from the western world.