Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
European savants used to rationalize why no one had ever seen a living ammonite. But, un-
like ammonites, mammoths could not be hiding in the deep sea.
Across the pond, scholars were starting to doubt that mammoths were still alive and well.
Near the close of the century, in 1796, Georges Cuvier, a professor of natural history at
the College de France and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, compared bones of
mammoth carcasses to those of African and Indian elephants. Mammoths matched neither
living species. But if Noah saved all the animals, how could these fossils represent extinct
animals? Was this possibly evidence of animals that lived and died long before the Flood
and that inhabited a world much older than the one laid out in Genesis?
A lifelong churchgoer, Cuvier was born into a Lutheran family in the French-speaking
German Duchy of Württemburg. By the time of the French Revolution, he had built a repu-
tation as an expert in animal anatomy, studying marine organisms while working as a tutor
for a family of nobles in Normandy. When France annexed his hometown, he moved to
Paris, where he was appointed understudy to an aging professor. He had a unique talent
for understanding the relation between invertebrate form and function, and rapidly rose to
prominence in scientific circles. Cuvier also served as the vice president of the Bible So-
ciety of Paris. At the natural history museum, he had the opportunity to see collections of
fossils from all over the world.
When the revolutionary armies of France swept through what is now Belgium, an official
team of trained specialists, including a naturalist, accompanied them to plunder useful or
valuable objects. Most of the team focused on acquiring the best crop varieties and agri-
cultural machinery. The naturalist had an eye for extraordinary fossils and returned to Paris
with loot fit for a king.
As a hundred and fifty crates of specimens from France's new conquests to the east ar-
rived at the museum in Paris, so, too, did Cuvier. It was to be a turning point in his think-
ing and career. He found two elephant skulls among the samples that were unpacked in the
auditorium, one from southern Africa and the other from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), off the south-
ern coast of India. Cuvier carefully measured and analyzed these skulls alongside those of
Siberian mammoths and found that they were from distinctly different species. The conclu-
sion was clear—the mammoth skulls resembled no living species.
