He attended high school at Ribe Katedralskole and commenced 1859 studies of natural history at the University of Copenhagen, but left university for three-and-a-half year (1863–1866) to act as secretary for the Danish palaeontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund, who lived and worked in Lagoa Santa, Brazil. After his return to Europe, he studied for a year under K.F.P. Martius, K.W. Nägeli and Ludwig Radlkofer in Munich and, in 1871, under J.L. von Hanstein in Bonn. Later in the same year (1871), he defended his Doctor of Philosophy thesis at Copenhagen.