Henry Testot-Ferry

O'Brien brought as dowry her property at Prissé, Saône-et-Loire which they occupied until moving to settle down in the village of Bussières, situated a few kilometres from the Rock of Solutré.

Testot-Ferry was the first to note traces of different prehistoric occupations in Saône river valley, which he found while searching the region in its entirety and particularly the Charbonnières-les-Sapins site.

With paleontology overtaking geology as his main interest, Testot-Ferry started to probe the Crot-du-Charnier site at the foot of the Rock of Solutré in 1866, which had outcrops of horse bones (called "magma").

Shortly afterwards, Testot-Ferry discovered, along the road crossing Crot-du-Charnier, a zone of homes from the "Reindeer Age" (the Upper Paleolithic era of prehistory) containing numerous flint tools and the remains of fauna.

In 1868, Testot-Ferry concluded that a hunting station had existed at the foot of the rock: If only from the prevalence of weapons, scrapers and blades, it is easy to see that what one has here is a culture of exclusive hunting, which needed weapons most of all in order to master their prey, then blades to dismember it, cutting away bone and antlers, then scrapers to expose the gut, scrape the bones and particularly to prepare the hides, a step which must have been one of the main activities of the tribe when they returned to their homes, judging by the number of this last type of tool.In 1867 Testot-Ferry had also discovered a small statuette of a deer.