History of paleontology

The history of the Paléontologie was born from the interrogation of the men to find petrified animals or their bones (Fossile S). It is thought that the first explanations of discovered its fossils is the birth of legends on the dragons. Many a scientist like Chinese Shen Kuo at the 11th century tried to give a more rational explanation. However, it has was necessary to await the development of the scientific thought and the desacralization of the company at the 17th century in Europe so that are born the theories which were going to lead the scientists of the 18th century towards the Théorie of the evolution.

Antiquity

Besides the antique knew the fossils, the fossil word derives from the Latin traditional fossilis . Théophraste, a disciple of Aristote, interpreted the significance of the Fossile S in an erroneous way, but its interpretation was not contradicted until the scientific revolution of the XVIIe century. The work of this old Greek scientist, translated into Latin and in other languages, was used as reference during nearly two thousand years.

In China

In China, the scholar Shen Kuo (1031 - 1095) observed marine fossils in the various geological layers of the mountain have-hang You Shan which is to several hundred kilometers of the sea nearest. He deduced from it correctly that these mountains were at one time located at the sea level

“I saw shells of bivalves in a horizontal layer, crossing a cliff. This lays down fossils was at one time given at the seaside, although the sea is now to several hundred kilometers more in the East. ”

. Its assumption gained Europe later only many centuries. He also thought that the fossil plants were evidence of changes occurred in the climate.

In Europe

The fossils were interpreted with the Moyen-âge like evidence of the biblical Déluge and “testified to the destruction of certain species per God. ”. Bernard Palissy is one of the first Europeans to be been interested in paleontology. Naturalist amateur, it collects the petrified bones and the archaeological artefacts, confused under the names of fossils. He gives conferences on the subject in 1576 during which he exposes various dared theories of which theories on the fossils for which he was to judge heretic, it is condemned to be hung and flaring. These theories are regarded today as extravagant. Paleontology as a science, is born truly with Georges Cuvier at the end of the 18th century

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