Fieldtrips, museums, collections and catalogues intermingle in a net of relations established among naturalists who developed their careers as the building up of paleontology in Brazil and in Argentina took place from the second half of the nineteenth century on. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Argentinean Patagonia - terra incognita - was the scenery of several controversial scientific issues, which characterize not only the development of Paleontology-related sciences in Latin America, but also the scientific cooperation between Hermann von Ihering (1850 -1930), director of Museu Paulista in São Paulo from 1894 to 1915, and Florentino Ameghino (1854 -1911), an Argentinean naturalist who became a reference for science in his days as to mammal paleontology in South-America.
collectionism; museums; fieldwork; Paleontology; Latin America