Page 42 - The Restless Earth Fossils

so Many Fossils, so little time 41

humans have witnessed during recorded history. Nevertheless,
Uniformitarianism rightly emphasizes that most geological his-
tory proceeds by the forces of erosion, sedimentation, and uplift
that we see today. He estimated the age of some of the oldest
fossil-bearing rocks at the then-unheard-of age of 240 million
years.
Charles Darwin also liked Lyell’s old-age estimate for fossil-
bearing rocks because it provided more time for living things to
evolve according to his mechanism of natural selection. Darwin
and Lyell became good friends. Lyell strongly supported Darwin’s
The Origin of Species when it was published in 1859. He even
extended the concept of evolution to human beings, something
that Darwin was not prepared to do at the time.

the Map that changed the World

William Smith (1769–1839) dug ditches and lots of them. He
surveyed the English countryside as part of major canal construc-
tion projects in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries. Canals served transportation needs then the way interstate
highways do now. Smith’s father, a blacksmith, died when he
was eight. Smith could not afford an education beyond grammar
school. But he worked hard, performed his job well, and kept his
eyes—and his mind—open.
His work as a surveyor took him into coal mines where he
could see the distinct layers, or strata, of the Earth clearly. Many
of these strata held fossils. As he traveled the length and breadth
of England on various jobs, he recognized something that no one
had truly noticed before: Certain fossils always appeared in par-
ticular strata no matter where he went in the country. As Simon
Winchester relates in his book, The Map That Changed the World,
this realization struck him clearly on the cold evening of Tuesday,
January 5, 1796. He had decided not to return home that night
because the weather was too bad. As he sat at a table at the Swan
Inn in Dunkerton, he scribbled an excited note with one phrase
underlined for emphasis: “Fossils have long been studied as great
curiosities, collected with great pains, treasured with great care

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