January 1, 1758

10th edition of Systema Naturae

Publication of Systema Naturae, 10th edition, volume 1

One of the most important dates in science never literally happened. Zoological rules assigned 1 January to a book whose title page says only 1758.

A year on the title page

The first volume of Linnaeus's tenth edition appeared in Stockholm with a 1758 imprint, published by Lars Salvius under the Latin form Holmiae, and covered the animal kingdom in viii preliminary pages plus 824 numbered ones.

The surviving title page supplies a year, not a day. For nomenclatural purposes the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature arbitrarily deems the work published on 1 January 1758 — a status imposed retrospectively, not announced at the time.

Names that stuck

In this volume Linnaeus consistently applied two-part genus-and-species names across the animal kingdom. Homo sapiens is here, and so is the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus, named on page 230 and still attributed to Linnaeus, 1758.

The revised classification renamed Quadrupedia as Mammalia, moved whales and dolphins from the fishes into the mammals, and renamed Anthropomorpha as Primates.

What came with the names

Linnaeus divided Homo sapiens into six groupings — ferus, americanus, europaeus, asiaticus, afer and monstrosus — of which only four were geographical varieties, and attached prejudicial physical and behavioural descriptions to them.

The edition ran to two volumes: animals in 1758 and plants on 7 June 1759, with a projected mineral volume never published as part of it. Calling the author Carl von Linné in 1758 is anachronistic; he was ennobled in 1761.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

January 1 is explicitly described by the zoological Code as arbitrary. The defensible historical date is therefore 1758; January 1 is a conventional nomenclatural date.
The work's tenth edition was issued in two volumes: Animalia in 1758 and Vegetabilia in 1759. A proposed mineral volume was not published as part of this edition.