Fabio Colonna

Fabio Colonna (called Linceo; 1567 – 25 July 1640) was an Italian naturalist and botanist. Biography He was the son of Girolamo Colonna, a philologist and antique dealer who was also editor of the fragments of the Latin poet Ennius. As a youngster he became proficient in Latin and Greek before attending the University of Naples, where he graduated in law in 1589. He suffered from epilepsy, which prevented him from practicing law, so he turned to studying the ancient authors of medicine, botany and natural history. He noticed numerous errors and omissions in Dioscorides' Materia medica, but his commentary on that work is now lost. In the period between 1606 and 1616, Colonna studied fossils, finding evidence for their organic origins.