Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the staff of the Mus
´
um National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He
produced numerous topics, on the flora of France and hydrogeology
amongst other subjects, and he is today chiefly remembered for his
ideas in zoology and the inheritance of characteristics from generation
to generation. Martin Rudwick, writing in 1985, said of Lamarck's
ideas that 'In his great System of Invertebrate Animals (1801) he
asserted that ''one must believe that every living thing whatsoever
must change insensibly in its organisation and in its form''; and given
enough time such slow changes were not the least surprising, he
argued, for there had been ample time for the fossil forms to turn
into the living ...'. Lamarck went on to say that 'one may not assume
that any species has been really lost or rendered extinct.' He was
saying that species were transformed into new species, as against
Cuvier's views that species could become extinct. Lamarck was on
unstable ground in that he had little understanding of the elements of
stratigraphy and was not an experienced palaeontologist. He was
unlike Cuvier, who although younger had already begun his rigorous
work on the fossil faunas of the Paris Basin which was enhanced by
anatomical comparisons with living organisms. By the end of his life
Cuvier was considered to be the doyen of French palaeontology and
had been the recipient of numerous honours.
In 1844 Robert Chambers (1802-1871) published The Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation that questionedwhether the sequence
of fossils seen in the geological record represented transformed species
of those originally created by a divine hand. Tampering with God's
plans did not go downwell in intellectual circles and it was just as well
for Chambers that he published his book anonymously.
Fifty-eight years after the publication of Lamarck's Syste`me des
animaux sans verte`bres (1801) a book was published in England that
formed the basis of our present understanding of evolution and its
mechanisms. Its author was Charles Darwin, who had spent five
years circumnavigating the globe in HMS Beagle on its voyage between
December 1831 and October 1836. Darwin served as the ship's natu-
ralist and while the study of geology was his first love he assembled
