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Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology (1830–33), which presented to a wide public audience the idea that the earth was shaped by the same natural processes still in operation today, operating at similar intensities. The philosopher William Whewell termed this gradualistic view "uniformitarianism" and contrasted it with catastrophism, which had been championed by Georges Cuvier and was better accepted in Europe. The combination of evidence and eloquence in Principles convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of "deep time" for understanding the earth and environment.
Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier, known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
In geology, catastrophism theorises that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This contrasts with uniformitarianism, according to which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, brought about all the Earth's geological features. The proponents of uniformitarianism held that the present was "the key to the past", and that all geological processes throughout the past resembled those that can be observed today. Since the 19th-century disputes between catastrophists and uniformitarians, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the scientific consensus accepts that some catastrophic events occurred in the geologic past, but regards these as explicable as extreme examples of natural processes which can occur.
Timeline of paleontology
Deep time is a term introduced and applied by John McPhee to the concept of geologic time in his book Basin and Range (1981), parts of which originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine.
William Buckland DD, FRS was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist.
John Phillips FRS was an English geologist. In 1841 he published the first global geologic time scale based on the correlation of fossils in rock strata, thereby helping to standardize terminology including the term Mesozoic, which he invented.
Flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the global flood described in Genesis 6–8. In the early 19th century, diluvial geologists hypothesized that specific surface features provided evidence of a worldwide flood which had followed earlier geological eras; after further investigation they agreed that these features resulted from local floods or from glaciers. In the 20th century, young-Earth creationists revived flood geology as an overarching concept in their opposition to evolution, assuming a recent six-day Creation and cataclysmic geological changes during the biblical flood, and incorporating creationist explanations of the sequences of rock strata.
Kirkdale Cave is a cave and fossil site located in Kirkdale near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England. The cave was discovered by workmen in 1821, and was found to contain fossilized bones of a variety of mammals not currently found in Great Britain, including hippopotamus, elephant, and the remains of numerous cave hyenas. William Buckland analyzed the cave and its contents in December 1821: he determined that the bones were from the remains of animals brought into the cave by hyenas who had been using it for a den, and not a result of the Biblical flood floating animal remains in from distant lands as he had first thought. His reconstruction of an ancient ecosystem from detailed analysis of fossil evidence was admired at the time, and considered to be an example of how geo-historical research should be done.
Alexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, geologist, paleontologist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris. Observing fossil content as well as lithology in sequences, he classified Tertiary formations and was responsible for defining 19th century geological studies as a subject of science by assembling observations and classifications.
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself.
Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell that was first published in 3 volumes from 1830–1833. Lyell used the theory of uniformitarianism to describe how the Earth's surface was changing over time. This theory was in direct contrast to the geological theory of catastrophism.
Scriptural geologists were a heterogeneous group of writers in the early nineteenth century, who claimed "the primacy of literalistic biblical exegesis" and a short Young Earth time-scale. Their views were marginalised and ignored by the scientific community of their time. They "had much the same relationship to 'philosophical' geologists as their indirect descendants, the twentieth-century creationists." Paul Wood describes them as "mostly Anglican evangelicals" with "no institutional focus and little sense of commonality". They generally lacked any background in geology, and had little influence even in church circles.
Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset, was the first pictorial representation of a scene of prehistoric life based on evidence from fossil reconstructions, a genre now known as paleoart. The first version was a watercolour painted in 1830 by the English geologist Henry De la Beche based on fossils found in Lyme Regis, Dorset, mostly by the professional fossil collector Mary Anning. De la Beche had the professional artist Georg Scharf produce lithographic prints based on the painting, which he sold to friends to raise money for Anning's benefit. It was the first depiction of a scene from deep time to see even limited publication. The print was used for educational purposes and widely circulated in scientific circles; it influenced several other such depictions that began to appear in both scientific and popular literature. Several later versions were produced.
Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff was a German natural historian and geologist.
Phascolotherium is a genus of extinct eutriconodont mammal from the Middle Jurassic of the United Kingdom. Found in the Stonesfield Slate, it was one of the first Mesozoic mammals ever found and described, although like the other mammal jaws found at the same time, it was mistakenly thought at first to be a marsupial.
Kenton Stewart Wall Campbell, known as Ken Campbell, was an Australian palaeontologist and academic. Campbell was born in Ipswich, Queensland. He was the son of two store clerks who moved their family to Boonah during the Great Depression. He attended primary school in Ipswich, Boonah and Coorparoo. After winning a scholarship to attend Brisbane Grammar School in 1940, Campbell went on to university. In 1945, Campbell entered his second year of his study, attending lectures given by Dr Dorothy Hill, who had returned from World War II service in the WRANS. Her academic rigour inspired him. He took his B.Sc. with Honours from the University of Queensland in 1949 on her advice, followed by his M.Sc. in 1951 and PhD in 1958. His research was in Permian brachiopods of the Bowen and adjacent basins.
Jules de Christol was a French paleontologist and geologist who identified the fossil horse ancestor Hipparion. He was among the first French zoologists to suggest the existence of human remains that were "antediluvian", older than the supposed Biblical flood, contrary to the dominant view of earth history at the time.
Earth's Deep History is a 2014 book by historian and geologist Martin J. S. Rudwick about advances in geological time and deep history, a term for the development of Earth's history and the distant past of the human species. Reviews were largely positive although some criticized Rudwick's minimalism in relation to the conflict between science and religion and the rejection of evolution by religious groups.
References
- ↑ Cambridge University (7 December 2004). "HPS: Martin Rudwick". Archived from the original on 14 July 2009. Retrieved 29 December 2007.
- ↑ University of California, San Diego. "People". Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 29 December 2007.
- ↑ History of Science Society. "History of Science Society - The Society". Archived from the original on 12 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
- ↑ Paul Voosen, "Historians of Science Seek Accommodation with Their Subject", Chronicle of Higher Education , May 27, 2014.
- ↑ "Professor Martin Rudwick". Fellows. The British Academy. Retrieved 14 July 2016.
- ↑ Taquet, Philippe (2 April 1998). "Review of Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes by Martin J. S. Rudwick". 392 (6675): 453–454.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Moorbath, Stephen (6 April 2006). "Review of Bursting the Limits of Time by Martin J. S. Rudwick". Nature. 440 (7085): 743. doi: 10.1038/440743a .
- ↑ Baker, Victor R. (24 July 2008). "Review of Worlds Before Adam by Martin J. S. Rudwick". Nature. 454 (7203): 406–407. doi: 10.1038/454406b .
- ↑ Rudwick, Martin J. S. (15 October 2014). Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters. ISBN 9780226204093.
