Page 10 - The Restless Earth Fossils

Fossils

special ceremonies. These bones were found at sites where paleon-
tologists continue to find the fossils of ancient mammals.
After the Greek and the Roman cultures that followed
fell, the remnants of the Roman Empire formed a tight alli-
ance with the Roman Catholic Church. Church beliefs became
official state policy that was often brutally enforced to main-
tain civil order. Fossils became inconvenient objects not easily
explained by narrow interpretations of church doctrine. They
were described simply as remnants of Noah’s flood, accidents
of nature, or even as deliberate creations of a devil intent on
confusing mere mortals.

tongue stones and the insights oF
nicolaus steno
In the autumn of 1666, fishermen came upon a huge great
white shark washed ashore on an Italian coastline. Perhaps
because great whites can become “man eaters,” they lashed the
still-thrashing animal to a tree and killed it. The Grand Duke
Ferdinando II in Florence, Italy, soon learned about the fisher-
men’s adventure and ordered them to deliver the carcass to his
palace. By that time, the shark’s body was a bit ripe with decay,
but the fishermen cut off the animal’s head, loaded it on a cart,
and sent it to the duke.
The duke respected knowledge and admired skilled and intel-
ligent people. In fact, he had sheltered an astronomer named
Galileo Galilei, who supported the then-radical idea proposed by
Copernicus that the Earth orbited the sun and not vice versa after
observing the satellites of planets with his newly invented tele-
scope. In 1666, according to Alan Cutler, author of The Seashell
on the Mountaintop, “Ferdinando’s court was home to a scientific
academy founded by several of Galileo’s former pupils, deter-
mined to keep his spirit alive.”
Even though the duke entertained many learned men at his
academy, he chose Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) to dissect the
great white shark. Nicolaus, though only 28, had already made a
(continued on page 12)

RE_Fossils2print.indd 9 3/17/09 8:58:24 AM