Georgius
Agricola (1494- 1555)
Georg
Bauer, better known by
the Latin version
of his name Georgius Agricola, is considered the founder of geology as
a discipline. His work paved the way for further systematic study of
the Earth and of its rocks, minerals, and fossils.
In 1544, he published the De
ortu et causis subterraneorum,
in which he laid the first foundations of a physical geology, and
criticized the theories of the ancients. However, he maintained that a
certain 'materia pinguis' or 'fatty matter,' set into fermentation by
heat, gave birth to fossil
organic shapes, as opposed to fossil shells having
belonged to living animals. In 1545, he followed with the De natura eorum quae effluunt e
terra; in 1546 the De
veteribus et novis metallis, a comprehensive account of
the discovery and occurrence of minerals and also more commonly known
as De Natura Fossilium;
in 1548, the De
animantibus subterraneis; and in the two following years a
number of smaller works on the metals. Read more on Wikipedia
or Encyclopedia
Britannica
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Mary Anning
(21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector and dealer
who became known around the world for important finds she made in
Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at
Lyme Regis, now part of what is now called the Jurassic Coast , in the
county of Dorset in Southwest England. Her findings contributed to
important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the
history of the Earth.
Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue
Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides
exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were
lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first
ichthyosaur
skeleton correctly identified; the first two more complete plesiosaur skeletons
found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and
important fish fossils.
Her
observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known
as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also
discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like
those of modern cephalopods. Her discoveries inspired famous geologist
(and childhood friend) Henry De la Beche to paint 'Duria Antiquior - A
More Ancient Dorset' in 1830. He sold prints to raise money for Mary,
who was still struggling to make ends meet. Duria Antiquior - complete
with ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur - is the very first pictoral
representation of prehistoric life based on fossil evidence.
Today
the Natural History Museum in London showcases several of Mary Anning's
spectacular finds, including her ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur.
Much like they did two centuries ago, her fossils continue to captivate
visitors from around the world.
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Grigores
Antipa(1861-1944)
was
the zoologist, ichthyologist,
Hydrobiology, economist, ecologist,
oceanology, museology. He founded the Romanian school of Hydrobiology,
ichthyology and oceanology, pioneer in the field of museology, the
author of modern concepts in ecology, biosociologiei, biosphere. He
was director of the Museum of Natural History in Bucharest, where he
had an important contribution to the organization on a phylogenetic and
ecological collections. As a token of gratitude for his work in the
museum since 1933, Museum of Natural History bears his name.
Some web sites or even catalogues mentioned this stamp as stamp of
first
paleontologist, but it is wrong. The missleading is caused by fossil of
Dinotherium giganteum depicting on a background of the stamp.
It is there just because it is the
most impressive artifact of the museum.
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![Georges Buffon Georges Buffon](../../images/preview/pm/others/t_france_1957_pm.jpg)
Georges-Louis
Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) He
envisioned the nature of science and understood the roles
of
paleontology, zoological geography, and animal psychology. He
realized both the necessity of transformism and its difficulties.
Although
his cosmogony was inadequate and his theory of animal reproduction was
weak, and although he did not understand the problem of classification,
he did establish the intellectual framework within which most
naturalists up to Darwin worked.Buffon
is considered the founder of evolutionary theory. He was the first who
mentioned that living species changed through time and who found some
similarities between humans and apps, rhen suggested they might have a
common ancestor. George Buffon set
forth his general views on species classification in the first volume
of his "Histoire Naturelle". Buffon
objected to the so-called "artificial" classifications of Andrea
Cesalpino and Carolus linnaeus, stating that in nature the chain of
life has small gradations from one type to another and that the
discontinuous categories are all artificially constructed by mankind.
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Zdenek
Burian (1905-1981)
was a Czech painter and book illustrator whose work played a
central role
in the development of palaeontological reconstructions during a
remarkable career spanning five decades. Originally recognised only in
his native Czechoslovakia, Burian's fame later spread to an
international audience, and a number of artists later attempted to
emulate his style. He is regarded by many as the most influential
palaeo-artist of the modern era. Burian
was an extremely prolific artist whose works are estimated to number
between 15,000 and 20,000 paintings and drawings (pen and pencil). He
illustrated over 500 books (including natural history subjects and
numerous classic novels such as Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan, Plutonia)
and some 600 book covers, but it is within the fields of palaeontology
and palaeoanthropology that Burian's influence has been most notable.
Since the late 1950s and early 1960s when Burian's work became known in
the west through a series of large-format books released by the Artia
publishing house, numerous scholarly and popular books on prehistoric
life have featured his work, either as originals or as art based
closely on them. Burian
worked in initial cooperation with university palaeontologist Josef
Augusta from 1938/39 (during World War II all universities in
Czechoslovakia were closed due to the German occupation) and
subsequently (following Augusta's death in 1968) with
Zdenek pinar,
painting accurate and magnificent reconstructions representing all
forms of prehistoric life from many parts of the globe, from the
earliest invertebrates to a vast array of fish, amphibians, reptiles,
mammals and birds, as well as panoramic vistas of the landscapes in
which they lived. Close to 500 prehistoric images were painted by him
between the early 1930s and the late 1970s. Whilst
some of Burian's earliest palaeo works depicting North American species
were inspired by the pioneering American palaeo-artist Charles R.
Knight (see for example, his first renditions of Stegosaurus and
Brontotherium), partly because Burian lacked access to skeletal
material for such reconstructions, Burian's work was less stylised and
more convincing with respect to both the subjects and their landscapes,
and soon became highly regarded amongst palaeontologists, especially in
Europe. Previous palaeo-artists had often produced speculative works
reflecting 19th century views of large dinosaurs as lethargic reptiles
akin to giant lizards with sprawling limbs, but Burian convincingly
painted them as active animals with parasagittal (mammal or bird-like)
limb-movement and musculature.
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Charles
Darwin (1809 -1882 ) Charles Darwin was born in
Shrewsbury, Shropshire in 12 February 1809,
to a wealthy and well-connected family.
He
had initially planned to study
medicine at Edinburgh University but later switched to Divinity
at Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science. His five-year
voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose
observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian
ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as
a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife
and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the
transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection
in 1838. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he
needed time for extensive research and his geological work had
priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel
Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting
immediate joint publication of both of their theories.
His 1859 book On the Origin of Species established
evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific
explanation of diversification in nature. He examined human evolution
and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation
to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his
final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.
The fact that evolution occurs became accepted
by the scientific
community and much of the general public in his lifetime, while his
theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary
explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the
basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin's
scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences,
providing logical explanation for the diversity of life. In
recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence, he was one of only five
19th-century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac
Newton. Darwin's work had far-reaching impacts on the development of
Paleontology,
Antropology and many other Biology and Psyology related scients.
![Charles Darwin Charles Darwin](../../images/thematic/persons/darwin_charles3.jpg)
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Saturnin
Garimond
(1914-1987), self-taught naturalist of great competence and
collaborator of of the Laboratory of Paleontology of the Institute of
Evolution Sciences of Montpellier . ![Saturnin Garimond Saturnin Garimond](../../images/thematic/persons/garimond.jpg)
Already in age of 16, he discovered several prehistoric stations in
small region of Malgoires around Fons.
In 1932 he found in the Eocene the mammalian levels reported in 19th
century, and discovered on the edge of the Urgonian a higher Cretaceous
outcrop not mentioned on the map,
where he collects bone fragments in which he recognizes remains of
Dinosaurs.
For years, he spends many days in the field with the researchers from
the laboratory and actively participate in excavations in the Eocene at
Fons, Euzet and Robiac.
More information [1]
[2]
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Thomas
Henrey Huxley (1825-1895)
Huxley
was a big defender of Charles
Darwin's
theory of evolution. He received the nickname "Darwin's bulldog." After
reading Darwin's Origin of Species, Huxley reaction was: "How stupid of
me not to have thought of that."
Was a self-educated intellectual giant of the 19th century, a
pioneering genius whose influence was felt throughout the science,
education, and politics of Victorian England. His brilliant career
ranged from surgeon's apprentice to England's Privy Council, service on
10 royal commissions, and president of the Royal Society from 1881 to
1885. His many awards included the Royal, Copley, and Darwin medals.
A man of astonishing energy and prodigious talent,
Huxley had a sharp wit and a brilliant, questioning mind (traits no
doubt passed on to his grandsons, including novelist Aldous Huxley
[Brave New World, etc.]).
He invented the term "agnostic" to describe his own
religious view, and the term's widespread, immediate acceptance freed
intellectual discourse from the belief-versus-disbelief
straightjacket, in and out of theistic contexts.
And yet while he was never one to sacrifice principle
for propriety, he vigorously defended his ideas but always treated his
opponents with respect and sometimes-astonishing courtesy.
Always a popularizer of science, he at once subscribed
to Charles Darwin's theories and proved to be their most indefatigable
advocate.
The role earned him the title "Darwin's bulldog", and he
is best remembered today for his prominent role in defending evolution
against attacks from scientists, theists, and philosophers
somewhat
ironic, for Huxley's biological writings show less explicit support for
natural selection than for evolution itself.
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Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) USA
third
President of the United States,
as universally
recognized as a man of science. He was recognized as a pioneer in
ethnology, geography, anthropology and our subject paleontology.
Because of his wide range of knowledge, Jefferson was ahead of his time
in several lines of inquiry and advanced of contemporary scientists.
Even so, Jefferson never failed to acknowledge that in science he was
"an amateur. "One
of the first glimpses of
Jefferson's interest in
paleontology can be found in his Notes on the State of Virginia. It is
his most impressive scientific achievement, in which he recorded his
observations of flora, fauna, mountains, rivers, climate, population,
laws, politics, customs and fossils of his native state. In Notes
Jefferson, also, refuted the contentions of Count de Buffon that the
animals common to both old world and new are smaller in the new. One of
the reasons Jefferson wrote and published Notes was to refute a claim
by the eminent naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, that human and animal
life in America was degenerative and therefore inferior to the life
forms in Europe.
Buffon believed, Jefferson wrote in his
Notes,"that
nature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe than she
is on the other." Jefferson added with more than a hint of sarcasm, "as
if both sides were not warmed by the same genial sun," and launched
into a lengthy refutation of Buffon's hypothesis with convincing
evidence that animals are actually larger in America than in Europe.
The mastodon, or mammoth,was his clincher; Europe had produced no
animal to match this behemoth...his shipment of mastodon fossils to
Paris, therefore, was not entirely Enlightenment altruism; it was also
a final salvo in a scientific war. Buffon's suggestion that infant
America was nature's retardate drove him to collect the ancient bones
of the mammoth...When he received his fossils, he catalogued them
carefully and precisely, as was his habit, sending them off to
Philadelphia for admiration, and to Paris for edification. He kept a
few choice specimens, however, for his Monticello museum--trophies of a
sort in commemoration of his private victory in the battle of New World
versus Old. (McLaughlin, 1988) he entry room at Monticello had been
turned by Jefferson into a Natural History Museum which showed his
great interest
in fossils. Perhaps Jefferson's greatest contribution to
paleontology is that while President he helped to make it a respectable
pursuit and was largely responsible through the American Philosophical
Society for bringing together the materials necessary for its
advancement. As the first citizen of the young nation, Jefferson's
passion brought prestige and respectability to the young science.
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Jean
Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829),
France Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine
de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck
(1 August 1744, Bazentin, Somme - 18 December 1829), often just known
as "Lamarck", was a French soldier, naturalist, academic and an early
proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in
accordance with natural laws.
In the modern era, Lamarck is primarily remembered for a
theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, called soft
inheritance or Lamarckism. However, his idea of soft inheritance was,
perhaps, a reflection of the folk wisdom of the time, accepted by many
natural historians. Lamarck's contribution to evolutionary theory
consisted of the first truly cohesive theory of evolution, in which an
alchemical complexifying force drove organisms up a ladder of
complexity, and a second environmental force adapted them to local
environments through use and disuse of characteristics, differentiating
them from other organisms. Lamarckism (or Lamarckian inheritance) is
the idea that
an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its
lifetime to its offspring (also known as heritability of acquired
characteristics or soft inheritance). It is named after the French
biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), who incorporated the
action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories. He is often
incorrectly cited[citation needed] as the founder of soft inheritance,
which proposes that individual efforts during the lifetime of the
organisms were the main mechanism driving species to adaptation, as
they supposedly would acquire adaptive changes and pass them on to
offspring. After publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural
selection, the importance of individual efforts in the generation of
adaptation was considerably diminished. Later, Mendelian genetics
supplanted the notion of inheritance of acquired traits, eventually
leading to the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis, and
the general abandonment of the Lamarckian theory of evolution in
biology. Despite this abandonment, interest in Lamarckism has recently
increased, as several studies in the field of epigenetics have
highlighted the possible inheritance of behavioral traits acquired by
the previous generation. In a wider context, soft inheritance is of use
when examining the evolution of cultures and ideas, and is related to
the theory of memetics.
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Carl
Linne (1707 - 1778) Sweden
![Carl Linne Carl Linne](../../images/thematic/persons/linnei_carl.jpg) Carl Linnaeus, was a Swedish
botanist, physician, and
zoologist,who laid the
foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature uses in all
biology related since, include paleontology.
He is known as the father of modern taxonomy,
and is also considered one
of the fathers of modern ecology.
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Charles
Wilson Peale (1741-1827) USA
was
an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for
his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution,
as well as establishing one of the first museums Peale
had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S.
scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in
his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later
renamed the Peale Museum. This
museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of
botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the
museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired,
and it was the first to display North American mastodon bones (which in
Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were
amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that
employed today).
display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long standing
debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that
Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated
through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the
existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern
regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in
America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as
did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three
dimension. The
museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew
a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who
presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural
world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various
times
it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence
Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical
Society. The
museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was
unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the
museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses
Kimball.
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Bernard
Palissy (1510–1589) was a French Huguenot potter,
hydraulics engineer and
craftsman, famous for having struggled for sixteen years to imitate
Chinese porcelain.
In the 19th-century, Palissy's pottery became the
inspiration for Mintons Ltd's Victorian majolica, which was exhibited
at the Great Exhibition of 1851 under the name "Palissy ware".
Palissy
is known for his contributions to the natural sciences, and is famous
for discovering principles of geology, hydrology and fossil
formation. He was one of the first Europeans to enunciate the correct
theory of the origin of fossils. Palissy correctly maintained that
fossils were the remains of once living organisms, and contested the
prevailing view that they had been produced by the biblical flood, or
by astrological influence. He argued that minerals, dissolving into
water to form "congelative water," would precipitate and thereby
petrify once living organisms in order to create fossils.
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Emil
Racovita (1868-1947)
was a Romanian biologist, zoologist,
speleologist and explorer of Antarctica. Together
with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural
sciences in Romania. Racovita was the first Romanian to have gone on a
scientific research expedition to the Antarctic, more than 100 years
ago, as well as an influential professor, scholar and
researcher. He
found and described several fossils in caves he was observing, for
example Ursilor Cave. The cave was discovered in 1975. The name of the
cave originates from the numerous cave-bear fossils discovered here,
being an appropriate shelter for animals for more than 15,000 years.
They believe that the cave entrance was blocked by a fallen rock so
that more than 140 bears attacked each other because of hunger. In
September 1975, a group of amateur speleologists from "Speodava" Club
explored the cave for the first time and 5 years later it was opened
for tourists.
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Antonio
Raimondi (1826-1890)
was born in Milan, Italy in 1824 and was
already as child very interested in natural science. In 1850 he left
Italy to escape the independence war in his country and came to Peru
for researches, scientific investigations and other observations; the
decision for Peru was very emotional but as well deliberate. He was
fascinated by the at this time absolutely unexplored country of the
Incas. Antonio Raimondi traveled more than 19 years in countless trips
through Peru and explored the country and the people under different
aspects of science. He investigated as well the impact of the Spanish
presence on the Peruvians and their culture. The
already during his lifetime well respected scientist gathered animals,
plants, insects, mineral, stones, fossils, drew maps, painted
watercolours and did much more. A lot of his findings and discoveries
are well assorted shown in the museum dedicated to him. The main
objective of the 'Museo Raimondi' is to honour this great scientist and
preserve his inestimable and irreplaceable efforts for Peru and the
general science. The museum displays the results of his unremitting
work in all areas he did researches like archaeology, botanic, geology,
history, chemistry, zoology, geography and cartography and mineralogy.
More
info [1]
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![Glossopteris on stamp Glossopteris on stamp](../../description/stamps/details/bat/2010/preview/bat_2010_5.jpg)
Robert Falcon Scott
CVO (6 June 1868 – 29 March 1912) was a Royal Navy officer and explorer
who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery
expedition of 1901–1904 and the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition of
1910–1912.
On the first expedition, he set a new southern record by
marching to latitude 82°S and discovered the Antarctic Plateau, on which the South Pole is located.
On the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, less
than five weeks after Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
Scott and his companions died on the second expedition.
When Scott and his party's bodies were discovered, 16kg of Glossopteris tree (an extinct beech-like tree from
250 million years ago) fossils from Queen Maud Mountains found next to their bodies, which they had dragged
on hand sledges. These fossils promised to Marie Stopes
to provide an evidence for Eduard Suess's
who suggested Antarctica had once been part of an ancient
super-continent named Gondwanaland (now Gondwana).
These fossils, were the first ever discovered Antarctic fossils
and proved that Antarctica had once been warm and connected to other continents as
suggested by Eduard Suess, as the same fossils found in Australia, Africa and South America, it was
like finding a missing piece of the Earth's jigsaw. It indicated that
these countries had all been part of the same prehistoric land mass.
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Johan Christian
Senckenberg (1707 - 1772),
Germany
![Johan Christian Senckenberg Johan Christian Senckenberg](../../images/thematic/persons/senckenberg_johan.jpg) was
a German physician , naturalist and
collector. In
1763 he established the Senckenberg Foundation to support natural
sciences. This founded the Botanischer Garten der Johann Wolfgang
Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main. His
name is honoured in the Senckenberg Gesellschaft fur Naturforschung
(Senckenberg Natural History Society) which he endowed and Naturmuseum
Senckenberg where many dinosaurs and other fossils are present.
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Neils Stensen , also
known as Nicholas Stenno
(1638 - 1686), Denmark
was a Danish pioneer in both anatomy and geology. Already in 1659 he
decided not to accept anything simply written in a book, instead
resolving to do research himself. He is considered the father of
geology and stratigraphy.
October 1666 two fishermen caught a huge
female shark near the town
of Livorno, and Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany,
ordered its head to be sent to Steno. Steno dissected the head and
published his findings in 1667. He noted that the shark's teeth bore a
striking resemblance to certain stony objects, found embedded within
rock formations, that his learned contemporaries were calling
glossopetrae or "tongue stones". Ancient authorities, such as the Roman
author Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historiae, had suggested that
these stones fell from the sky or from the Moon. Others were of the
opinion, also following ancient authors, that fossils naturally grew in
the rocks. Steno's contemporary Athanasius Kircher, for example,
attributed fossils to a "lapidifying virtue diffused through the whole
body of the geocosm", considered an inherent characteristic of the
earth an Aristotelian approach. Fabio Colonna, however, had
already
shown in a convincing way that glossopetrae are shark teeth, in his
treaty De glossopetris dissertatio published in 1616. Steno added to
Colonna's theory a discussion on the differences in composition between
glossopetrae and living sharks'
teeth,
arguing that the chemical composition of fossils could be altered
without changing their form, using the contemporary corpuscular theory
of matter. Steno's
work on shark teeth led him to the question of how any solid object
could come to be found inside another solid object, such as a rock or a
layer of rock. The "solid bodies within solids" that attracted Steno's
interest included not only fossils, as we would define them today, but
minerals, crystals, encrustations, veins, and even entire rock layers
or strata. He published his geologic studies in De solido intra solidum
naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus, or Preliminary discourse
to a dissertation on a solid body naturally contained within a solid in
1669. Steno was not the first to identify fossils as being from living
organisms; his contemporaries Robert Hooke and John Ray also argued
that fossils were the remains of once-living organisms.
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Eduard Suess (1831-1914)
The geologist and politician Eduard
Suess was born in London on August 20, 1831. He was full
professor of geology at the University of Vienna and at the same time a
full member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. His first book "Der
Boden der Stadt Wien" ("The Soil of Vienna"), which dealt with the
correlation of geologic conditions and water supply, marked the
beginning of his increasing scientific recognition from that time
forward. He gradually developed views on the
connection between Africa and Europe; eventually he came to the
conclusion that the Alps to the north were once at the bottom of an
ocean, of which the Mediterranean was a remnant. While not quite
correct (mostly because plate tectonics had not yet been
discovered
he used the earlier geosyncline theory), this is close enough to the
truth that he is credited with postulating the earlier existence of the
Tethys Ocean, which he named in 1893. Suess postulated that as
sediments filled the ocean basins the sea levels gradually rose, and
periodically there were events of rapid ocean bottom subsidence that
increased the ocean's capacity and caused the regressions. This became
known as the theory of eustasy (eustacy).
His other major theory involved
glossopteris fern fossils occurring in South America, Africa, and India
(as well as Antarctica, though Suess did not know this). His
explanation was that the three lands were once connected in a
supercontinent, which he named Gondwanaland.
Again, this is not quite correct: Suess believed that the oceans
flooded the spaces currently between those lands, when in fact the
lands drifted apart. Still, it is so similar to what is currently
believed that his naming has stuck.
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Alfred
Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and
biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of
evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to
publish his own theory.
Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and
then in
the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace Line that
divides the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts, one in
which animals closely related to those of Australia are common, and one
in which the species are largely of Asian origin. He was considered the
19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of
animal species and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".
Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th
century and made a number of other contributions to the development of
evolutionary theory besides being co-discoverer of natural selection.
These included the concept of warning colouration in animals, and the
Wallace effect, a hypothesis on how natural selection could contribute
to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against
hybridization.
Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas. His advocacy of
Spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher
mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with the
scientific establishment, especially with other early proponents of
evolution. In addition to his scientific work, he was a social activist
who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and
economic system in 19th-century Britain. His interest in biogeography
resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise
concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. Wallace was a
prolific author who wrote on both scientific and social issues; his
account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in
Indonesia and Malaysia, The Malay Archipelago, was one of the most
popular and influential journals of scientific exploration published
during the 19th century.
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Alfred
Lothar Wegener ( 1880 -1930) was
a German scientist, geophysicist, and meteorologist.
He
is most notable for his theory of continental drift
(Kontinentalverschiebung), proposed in 1912, which hypothesized that
the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. However, his
hypothesis was not accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries
such as palaeomagnetism confirmed his hypothesis of continental drift.
Alfred Wegener first thought of this idea by noticing that the
different large landmasses of the Earth almost fit together like a
jigsaw. The Continental shelf of the Americas fit closely to Africa and
Europe, and Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar fit next to the
tip of Southern Africa. But Wegener only took action after reading a
paper in Autumn 1911 and seeing that a flooded land-bridge contradicts
isostasy. Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to
join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid 1912. So he
hurried up to present his Continental Drift hypothesis on 6 January
1912. He analyzed either side of the Atlantic Ocean for rock type,
geological structures and fossils. He noticed that there was a
significant similarity between matching sides of the continents,
especially in fossil plants. His hypothesis was thus strongly supported
by the physical evidence, and was a pioneering attempt at a rational
explanation.
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Ole Worm (1588-
1654)
was
originally physician
in Copenhagen, but it was as a naturalist and founder of Denmark's very
first museum that he inscribed his name in history.
The museum was named after himself, "Museum
Wormianum", and was a true cornucopia of antiquities,
ethnographic items, and stuffed animals. During the Renaissance such
museums were established many places in Europe and called "Nature
Cabinets" and served as a kind of research libraries for anything not
yet described in books. The Danish museum no longer exists, but most of
the items are now transferred to and on display in the National Museum
and Zoological Museum.
One stamp (the right one) of "Drawings of
fossil animals from old books - Historiske Fossile" set
issued in Denmark on 1998 shows Ammonit
Parapuzosia, a fossil discovered by Ole Worm. The stamp is part of a
souvenir sheet containing four different stamps on historic fossils.
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