Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti

Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti (4 December 1735, Vienna – 17 February 1805, Vienna) was an Austrian naturalist and zoologist of Italian origin. He made important contributions to the study of animals, especially reptiles and amphibians.

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

One of his notable descriptions was of an unusual amphibian called the blind salamander, Proteus anguinus. He said it was found in cave waters in Slovenia or possibly western Croatia. This was one of the earliest times a cave animal was written about in books from the western world, even though people did not yet understand that it lived in caves.