Anton Moro

Anton Lazzaro Moro (16 March 1687 – 3 April 1764) was an Italian abbot, geologist and naturalist. He was one of the leading advocates of plutonism in the early debate that confronted plutonism with neptunism, making him described by some authors as an ultraplutonist. Moro was the first to discriminate sedimentary rocks from volcanic ones by studying the rocks of volcanic islands. In his study of the crustaceans, he discovered fossils petrified in mountains that led him to deduce that those rocks were once buried in the sea. Moro's work was singled out for praise by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology.