Evolution: History of evolutionary thought — Pre-Darwinian Ideas
How naturalists and geologists from Aristotle to Lyell set the stage for Darwin, and what Darwin actually added.
Try 3 questions
1. What did Georges Cuvier convince the scientific world of around 1800?
- Earth is only a few thousand years old
- Species can go extinct
- Species can change into new species
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Answer: Species can go extinct
By comparing fossil mammoths and mastodons with living elephants, Cuvier showed they were distinct animals no longer alive anywhere, making extinction an accepted fact.
2. How did Cuvier explain the different sets of fossils found in successive rock layers?
- Fossils formed from minerals, not living things
- Sudden catastrophes wiped out local faunas
- Species slowly transformed into one another
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Answer: Sudden catastrophes wiped out local faunas
Cuvier's catastrophism held that sudden 'revolutions' such as floods destroyed regional faunas, which were then replaced by animals migrating in, without any species changing.
3. Cuvier argued against species change using animals preserved from ancient Egypt. What did they show?
- They were larger than living forms
- They were ancestors of living forms
- They matched living forms exactly
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Answer: They matched living forms exactly
Mummified ibises and cats thousands of years old looked identical to modern ones, which Cuvier took as proof species don't change; we now know a few thousand years is far too short to expect visible change.
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