Page 24 - Introduction to Paleobiology and The Fossil Record

PALEONTOLOGY AS A SCIENCE 11
Figure 1.6 Lying stones: two of the remarkable
“fossils” described by Professor Beringer of
Wurzburg in 1726: he believed these specimens
represented real animals of ancient times that
had crystallized into the rocks by the action of
sunlight.
and why they were made of unusual
minerals.
The idea of plastic forces had been largely
overthrown by the 1720s, but some extraor-
dinary events in Wurzburg in Germany at that
time must have dealt the fi nal blow. Johann
Beringer (1667–1740), a professor at the uni-
versity, began to describe and illustrate
“fossil” specimens brought to him by collec-
tors from the surrounding area. But it turned
out that the collectors had been paid by an
academic rival to manufacture “fossils” by
carving the soft limestone into the outlines of
shells, fl owers, butterflies and birds (Fig. 1.6).
There was even a slab with a pair of mating
frogs, and others with astrologic symbols and
Hebrew letters. Beringer resisted evidence
that the specimens were forgeries, and wrote
as much in his book, the Lithographiae Wirce-
burgensis (1726), but realized the awful truth
soon after publication.
Fossils as fossils
The debate about plastic forces was termi-
nated abruptly by the debacle of Beringer’s
figured stones, but it had really been resolved
rather earlier. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519),
a brilliant scientist and inventor (as well as a
great artist), used his observations of modern
plants and animals, and of modern rivers and
seas, to explain the fossil sea shells found high
·LAMIAE PISCIS CAPVT·
·EIVSDEM LAMIAE DENTES·
Figure 1.7 Nicolaus Steno’s (1667) classic
demonstration that fossils represent the remains
of ancient animals. He showed the head of a
dissected shark together with two fossil teeth,
previously called glossopetrae, or tongue stones.
The fossils are exactly like the modern shark’s
teeth.
in the Italian mountains. He interpreted
them as the remains of ancient shells, and he
argued that the sea had once covered these
areas.
Later, Nicolaus Steno (or Niels Stensen)
(1638–1686) demonstrated the true nature of
glossopetrae simply by dissecting the head of
a huge modern shark, and showing that its
teeth were identical to the fossils (Fig. 1.7).
Robert Hooke (1625–1703), a contemporary
of Steno’s, also gave detailed descriptions of
fossils, using a crude microscope to compare
the cellular structure of modern and fossil
wood, and the crystalline layers in the shell of
a modern and a fossil mollusk. This simple
descriptive work showed that magical expla-
nations of fossils were without foundation.