Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
"Felis uncia" was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a snow leopard based on an earlier description by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, assuming that the cat occurred along the Barbary Coast, in Persia, East India and China. "Uncia" was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1854 who grouped Asian cats with a long and thick tail into this genus.