Jean Pierre Mégnin (16 January 1828 – 31 December 1905)[1] was a French army veterinarian and entomologist.

He led experiments which unveiled the eight distinct waves of insect succession on corpses exposed to air.

[2] Jean Pierre Mégnin, born in Herimoncourt, (Doubs), went to school at the Ecole d'Alfort from 1849 until his graduation in 1853.

In particular, he puts in place the theory of squads of carrion insects which successively colonize the corpses of mammals.

Although erroneous, this technique is the basis of the calculation of the post-mortem interval for the dating of corpses during police investigations.

Likewise, he introduced the classification of canine breeds according to the lupoid, molossoid, braccoid and graioid types.