All posts from October 13, 2015

At the end of the eighteenth century, Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier, also known as Georges Cuvier and widely remembered as the Father of Paleontology, helped establish extinction as a fact and laid the foundation for vertebrate paleontology. Born in Montbéliard, France, in 1769, Cuvier formed an interest in natural history at a young age, and by the time he was 26 (in 1795), he became the assistant of Jean-Claude Mertrud, the chair of comparative anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes.

By the seventeenth century, it was still widely believed that species could not become extinct, and there were still many hypotheses about the origin of fossils. One widely-held belief, extending back to Aristotle’s time, was that fossils were formed by the Earth itself, and that some “extraordinary Plastick virtue” could create stones that resembled, but were not, living organisms. But also during the seventeenth century, some critical advances in the world of science were having an impact on fossil research. Robert Hooke was born at Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, in 1635. Though of humble origins, he eventually studied at Oxford and impressed many of England’s leading scientists with his ability to design experiments and build equipment.

Our Fossil Stories citizen science challenge – a challenge to fully transcribe three paleontologists’ field books from the Smithsonian collection – is complete! Volunteers have successfully transcribed and reviewed 252 pages from 9 field books in just 3.5 days! Thanks to all of our awesome volunteers for their monumental efforts! As a reward, we’ll be hosting a behind-the-scenes tour of Smithsonian fossil collections with Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, on the BHL Periscope Account on October 26.

Until the end of the 18th century, it was generally believed that species could not become extinct, and despite important scientific advances in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was widely held that since the dawn of life, no new animal or plant species had been created or lost.Furthermore, until the 19th century, the word “fossil” referred to any object that had been dug up from the ground, including not only what we recognize today as organic remains, but also gemstones, minerals, and other inorganic materials.

The study of mythology associated with fossils is a relatively new field, which Adrienne Mayor (2005) terms “the folklore of paleontology”; she continues by saying that “[c]ombining oral traditions and paleontology, and drawing on history, archaeology, anthropology, and mythology, the investigation of fossil legends offers a new way of thinking about pre-Darwinian encounters with prehistoric remains” (Preface, p. xxiv). Drawing from several resources, one can create a dynamic picture of what a large variety of cultures around the world and throughout time have thought were the myths associated with dinosaur, bird, and other prehistoric fossils. Due to extensive travel, Greeks and Romans discovered fossils throughout the Mediterranean and into India (Mayor, 2000b, p. 8).

During the 1990-91 austral summer, geologist David Elliot came across fossil bones on Mount Kirkpatrick in the Beardmore Glacier region of the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica at an altitude of ~4,000 m (13,000 ft) high and about 640 km (400 mi) from the South Pole. The team notified paleontologist Bill Hammer, who then excavated the fossil-bearing rock over a three week period. The excavated skeleton was eventually given the name Cryolophosaurus ellioti in an 1994 article in Science by Hammer and paleontologist William J. Hickerson.

Welcome to Fossil Stories, a week-long social media event (presented by the Biodiversity Heritage Library in collaboration with several of our partner institutions) celebrating fossils!

Today, we recognize fossils as representing the preserved remains or traces of life from the ancient past. The scientific study of these fossils, how they formed, and their evolutionary relationship with each other and living species is known as paleontology. Humans have been uncovering fossils for millennia, but we have not always understood what they were.