This article, like a lot of articles that deal with any history of science before modern science, seems to drastically exaggerate the value of any piece of information or insight given before modern science starts developing, slowly, at the end of the 18th century, and it similarly exaggerates, by giving any meaning to, any similarity to a modern science concept and anything proposed pre-science. So as a lazy example, you can read Aristotle for a few pages and feel like there's some deep insight, like he knew some greater truth, until you realize that when he's making up theories on 100 things he might get lucky with a handful of sentences, or one or two propositions, that sound like something in the textbooks once people start actually doing things methodically. This kind of stuff is valuable to history, H&PoS, and anthropology, but it's not science.

That said, the main contribution of people like Cuvier, more than any now woefully-incorrect theory or now-erroneous classification he made (I'm not familiar with paleontology, but the "father of" figures have this in common), seems to be getting the people coming after to study and build upon existing literature, learn a methodology and follow it, publish findings (not hide them), and tutor others. In that sense, if what's said in the final section of the article is representative, then as this work is bringing new people into the academic field it is arguably at least of comparable value to the science as its original foundations.