All posts by michelle.underhill

Until the late 18th century, the study of mollusks was based largely on shells. Very little research or published information existed about molluscan anatomy and soft tissues. Giuseppe Saverio Poli, recognized by many as the father of malacology, changed this with his monumental publication, Testacea utriusque Siciliae eorumque historia et anatome (1791-1827). Poli, born in 1746 in Molfetta, Italy, studied classics, theology, and natural sciences at the University of Padua.

Lack of access to published information about biodiversity is one of the major inhibitors to efficient scientific research today. It’s such a longstanding problem, in fact, that it has a name. The taxonomic impediment. For hundreds of years, scientists and naturalists have published information about Earth’s species in books and journals. Many of these works, however, are available in only a few select libraries, and information about species is often not available within the countries in which those species live. The taxonomic impediment is a very poignant reality for Paul Smith and his colleagues working in Paraguay.

This post is the fifth in our series leading up to the celebration of World Oceans Day on June 8. This series explores publications that represent important milestones in the progress of marine bioscience research and ocean exploration. This post is an abbreviated version of a longer feature published on the Smithsonian Ocean Portal.

  As far back as antiquity, Western scholars theorized the existence of a great southern continent that they called Terra Australis. While the continent found its way onto many early European maps, this presentation was not based on actual surveys but instead the hypothesis that landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere must be balanced by respective landmasses in the Southern.

In the context of human history, ocean exploration is a relatively recent occurrence. Even by the 19th century, human knowledge of the oceans was still limited, and the flora and fauna that called the sea home, particularly within the depths, remained virtually unknown.

In 1897, a monumental work appeared in print for the first time. It was a story of invasion. It was a story of war. It was a story of Martians. The story, of course, was The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells, which first appeared in serialized form in the UK’s Pearson’s Magazine and the US’s Cosmopolitan magazine in 1897. It was later first published in book form by William Heinemann of London in 1898. Written between 1895-97, it is one of the earliest stories centered around conflict between humans and extraterrestrials. An extremely influential work, it has never been out of print. The 1906 Belgian edition of the book included drawings by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa.