Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
in 1708,
The Fishes' Complaint and Vindication
, in which Scheuchzer lampooned the
still popular idea that fossils were inorganic objects that just happened to resemble real
creatures. He shaped his narrative from the point of view of a fossil fish who complained in
formal Latin about not being recognized as an innocent victim of the flood sent to destroy
mankind.
“We, the swimmers, voiceless though we are, herewith lay our claim before the throne of Truth. We would reclaim
what is rightly ours… . Our claim is for the glory springing from the death of our ancestors… carried on the waves
before the Flood… . We bear irrefutable witness to the universal inundation.”
1
Scheuchzer's fossil narrator righteously demanded the dignity of being recognized as hav-
ing suffered alongside mankind during the Flood. Speaking for innocent marine creatures
that died when receding floodwaters stranded them on dry land, it added insult to injury to
deny that their own bones testified to their existence. The fossilized spokesman introduced
detailed illustrations of marine fossils that any fisherman would recognize as the remains
of familiar animals.
The year after his fossil fishes spoke up, Scheuchzer published
Herbarium of the Deluge
,
a collection of botanical prints illustrating plant life purportedly fossilized as a result of
the Flood. This collection of striking images showed exotic plants set in stone, offering a
window into a world before our own. That ferns and tropical plants had been growing in
Europe drew open the curtain of time to reveal a radically different world.
Seduced by what he saw as fossilized postcards of life before the Flood, Scheuchzer kept
looking for more flood victims. The limestone quarry at Oenigen, in the Alps near the west
end of Lake Constance, gave him access to fossil fish, bullfrogs, snakes, and even turtles.
He saw these fossils, now known to date from the Miocene epoch (ten to twenty million
years ago), as relics of Noah's Flood deposited along with the rest of the world's sediment-
ary rocks. Then in 1725 stone workers at the quarry unearthed part of an unusually large
skeleton and shipped it off to Scheuchzer, who promptly interpreted it as another flood vic-
tim. What better testimony to the veracity of the biblical flood than the bones of a drowned
sinner?
Naming this unlucky fellow
Homo diluvii testis
(man who testifies to the Flood), Sch-
euchzer sent off descriptions of his incredible find to British, French, and German journals
