Zerda has been important in the natural sciences of the late 19th and early 20th century in Colombia, publishing many articles about various topics, from medicine to chemical analysis, radioactivity and the popular drink chicha.

He attended the Colegio de San Bartolomé, a strict school that prohibited their students to walk on the streets at night, enter houses with a bad reputation, playing games or read obscene books.

His interest for natural sciences was born at the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, where Zerda, as student of Joaquín Acosta, took classes in chemistry, geology and mineralogy.

During the first years of this school, Zerda published about coca and opium use in Bogotá (Estudios sobre la Coca y el Opio bogotano), drinking water analysis (Análisis de las aguas potables de Bogotá) and oils (Método para blanquear y purificar los aceites grasos).

His book El Dorado, published in 1883 and reprinted in 1947, is one of the first anthropological, historical and ethnographical studies on the original inhabitants of the Bogotá savanna and northern areas of the Altiplano.

[5] Zerda did not analyse the work done on the Muisca calendar by famous naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who met Duquesne in Colombia in the early 19th century.

It has been thought possible by researcher Manuel Arturo Izquierdo Peña that the stone Zerda described was actually a mould used in the famous goldworking of the Muisca, to produce tunjos.

[7] In the later chapters of El Dorado, Zerda draws comparisons between the origins of the indigenous peoples of the Americas with Africa and Asia, based on metalworking and ceramics.

In his work, he described the ritual of El Dorado in sacred Lake Guatavita, represented in the golden Muisca raft, which was found after Zerda's death in Pasca, Cundinamarca.

[8] Deeply influenced by the ethnological works of Lubbock, De Mortillet and Broca, Zerda proposed a long chronology of the history of the Muisca.

[13] In 1885, Zerda described a mummy of a young girl, found in a cave on the Toquilla paramo within the municipality of Aquitania, at 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) altitude.