Page 23 - Introduction to Paleobiology and The Fossil Record

10 INTRODUCTION TO PALEOBIOLOGY AND THE FOSSIL RECORD

Figure 1.5 The sabertooth Smilodon as seen in Walking with Beasts (2001). The animals were
reconstructed from excellent skeletons preserved at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, and the hair
and behavior were based on studies of the fossils and comparisons with modern large cats.
(Courtesy of Tim Haines, image © BBC 2001.)

CGI effects are commonplace now in films, advertizing and educational applications. From a start

in about 1990, the industry now employs thousands of people, and many of them work full-time
on making paleontological reconstructions for the leading TV companies and museums.
Find out more about CGI at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/paleobiology/.

provided evidence for earlier positions of the into drinks in order to neutralize any poison
oceans. Other classical and medieval authors, that might have been placed there.
however, had a different view. Most fossils were recognized as looking
like the remains of plants or animals, but they
were said to have been produced by a “plastic
Fossils as magical stones
force” (vis plastica) that operated within the
In Roman and medieval times, fossils were Earth. Numerous authors in the 16th and
often interpreted as mystical or magical 17th centuries wrote books presenting this
objects. Fossil sharks’ teeth were known as interpretation. For example, the Englishman
glossopetrae (“tongue stones”), in reference Robert Plot (1640–1696) argued that ammo-
to their supposed resemblance to tongues, and nites (see pp. 344–51) were formed “by two
many people believed they were the petrifi ed salts shooting different ways, which by thwart-
tongues of snakes. This interpretation led to ing one another make a helical fi gure”. These
the belief that the glossopetrae could be used interpretations seem ridiculous now, but there
as protection against snakebites and other was a serious problem in explaining how such
poisons. The teeth were worn as amulets to specimens came to lie far from the sea, why
ward off danger, and they were even dipped they were often different from living animals,