Rise of Vertebrate Paleontology in Europe
To those who had been nurtured in the belief in a relatively recent creation covering in its entirety a period of but six days, and occurring but four millenniums before the time of Christ, the appearance of the remains of creatures in the rocks, the like of which no man ever saw alive, must have given scope to the wildest imaginings concerning their origin and significance; for many believed that not only had no new forms been added to the world’s fauna since the creation, except possibly by hybridizing, but that none had become extinct save a very few through the agency of human interference. The supposition was, therefore, that such creatures as were thus discovered were still extant in some more remote fastnesses of the world. Thus, our second president, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote one of the first papers on American fossil vertebrates, published in 1798, discussed therein the remains of a huge ground-sloth which has since borne the name Megalonyx jeffersoni. Jefferson, however, described the great claws as pertaining to a huge leonine animal which he firmly believed was yet living among the mountains of Virginia.
Cuvier (1769–1832) has been spoken of as the founder of our science. His opportunity lay in the profusion of bones buried in the gypsum deposits of Montmartre within the environs of the city of Paris. Cuvier’s studies of these remains, done in the light of his very broad anatomical knowledge, enabled him to prepare the first reconstructions of fossil vertebrates ever attempted and to bring before the eyes of his contemporaries a world peopled with forms which were utterly extinct. That these creatures were no longer living, none was a better judge than Cuvier, for his prominence was such that material was sent him from all parts of the world, to which must be added that which he saw in his visits to the various museums of Europe. He felt it safe, therefore, to affirm the unlikelihood of any further discovery of unknown forms among the great mammals of the present fauna of our globe, and few indeed have been the additions since his day. To Cuvier is due not alone the masterly contribution to the sister sciences of comparative anatomy and vertebrate paleontology—the Ossements Fossiles (1812)—but he also announced the presence in continental strata of a series of faunas which showed a gradual organic improvement from the earliest such assemblage to the most modern, an idea of the most fundamental importance and one with which he is rarely credited. He believed in the sudden and complete extinction of faunas, and the facts then known were in accord with this idea, as no common genera nor transitional forms connected the creatures of the Paris gypsum with the mastodons, elephants, and hippopotami which the later strata disclosed. It is not remarkable, therefore, that Cuvier advanced his theory of catastrophism to account for these extinctions. He should not, however, according to Depéret, be credited with the idea of successive re-creations, such as that held by D’Orbigny and others, but of repopulation by immigration from some area which the catastrophe, be it flood or other destructive agency, failed to reach.
Cuvier was followed in Europe by a number of illustrious men, none of whom, however, with the exception of Sir Richard Owen, possessed his breadth of knowledge of comparative anatomy upon which to base their researches among the prehistoric. The more notable of them may be enumerated before going on to a discussion of the American contributions to the science.
They were, first, Louis Agassiz, a pupil of Cuvier and later a resident of America, whose researches on the fossil fishes of Europe are a monumental work, the result of ten years of investigation in all of the larger museums of that continent, and which appeared in 1833–43, while he was yet a young man. The fishes were practically the only fossil vertebrates to come within the scope of his investigations, for his later time was consumed in the study of glaciers and of recent marine zoology. Another student of these most primitive vertebrates who left an enduring monument was Johannes Mϋller. Huxley, Traquair, and Jaekel also did masterly work upon this group, while Smith Woodward of the British Museum is considered the highest living authority upon fossil fishes.
Of the Amphibia, the most famous foreign students were Brongniart, Jaeger, Burmeister, Von Meyer, and Owen, although Owen’s claim to eminence lies rather in the investigations of fossil reptiles which he began in 1839 and continued over a period of fifty years of remarkable achievement. Not only did he describe the dinosaurs of Great Britain in a series of splendidly illustrated monographs, but extended his researches to the curious reptilian forms from the Karroo formation of South Africa. It was to him, moreover, that the establishment of the true position of the famous Archœopteryx as the earliest known bird and not a reptile is due. Von Meyer also enriched the literature of fossil reptiles, discussing exhaustively those occurring in Germany, while Huxley’s classic work on the crocodiles as well as on dinosaurs, and the labors of Buckland, Fraas, Koken, Von Huene, Gaudry, Hulke, Seeley, and Lydekker have added immensely to our knowledge of the group.
Of the birds, which at best are rare as fossils, our knowledge, especially of the huge flightless moas, is due largely again to Owen, and his realization of the systematic position of Archœopteryx has already been mentioned.
The mammals were, perhaps, the most prolific source of paleontological research during the nineteenth century, for, as Zittel has said, Cuvier’s famous investigations on the fossil bones, mentioned above, not only contain the principles of comparative osteology, but also show in a manner which has never been surpassed how fossil vertebrates ought to be studied, and what are the broad inductions which may be drawn from a series of methodical observations. Such was Cuvier’s influence that until Darwin began to interest himself in mammalian paleontology the study of these forms was conducted entirely along the lines indicated by the French savant. This was seen in a large work, Osteology of Recent and Fossil Mammalia, by De Blainville, which, although not up to the standard set by the master, is nevertheless a notable contribution, as was also the Osteology prepared by Pander and D’Alton. A summary of the knowledge of the fossil Mammalia up to the year 1847 is contained in Giebel’s Fauna der Vorwelt, and Lydekker has done for the mammals in the British Museum what Smith Woodward did for the fishes, producing vastly more than the mere catalogue which the title implies.
The first work wherein the fossil mammals were treated genealogically was Gaudry’s Enchaînements du Monde Animal, written in 1878. Other work on the fossil Mammalia was done by Kaup, who described those from the Mainz basin and from Epplesheim near Worms whence came one of the most famous of prehistoric horses, the Hipparion; this horse, together with the remarkable proboscidean Dinotherium, was described by Von Meyer. One of the most remarkable discoveries, ranking in importance, perhaps, next to Montmartre, was that of the Pliocene fauna of Pikermi near Athens, Greece, first made known through the publications of A. Wagner of Munich and later, and much more extensively, through that of Gaudry (1862–1867). H. von Meyer was Germany’s best authority on fossil Mammalia. After his death the work was carried on by Quenstedt, Oscar Fraas, Schlosser, Koken, and Pohlig, among others.
In France, rich deposits of fossil mammals were discovered in the Department of Puy-de-Dôme, the Rhone basin, Sansan, Quercy, and near Rheims. These were described by a number of writers, notably Croizet and Jobert, Pomel, Lartet, Filhol, and Lemoine.
Rütimeyer of Bâle was one of the most famous European writers on mammalian paleontology, and his researches were both comprehensive and clothed in such form as to give them a high place in paleontological literature. He studied comparatively the teeth of ungulates, discussed the genealogy of mammals, and the relationships of those of the Old and New Worlds. He was an exponent of the law of evolution as set forth by Darwin, and his “genealogical trees of the Mammalia show a complete knowledge of all the data concerning the different members in the succession, and are amongst the finest results hitherto obtained by means of strict scientific methods of investigation” (Zittel, History of Geology and Palæontology, 1901). The mammals of the Swiss Eocene have been studied in much detail by Stehlin.
For Great Britain, the most notable contributors were Buckland in his Reliquiæ Diluvianæ; Falconer, co-author with Cautley on the Tertiary mammals of India; Charles Murchison, who wrote on rhinoceroses and proboscideans; and more recently Bush, Flower, Lydekker, Boyd Dawkins, L. Adams, and C. W. Andrews. But by far the most commanding figure of all was Sir Richard Owen, who for half a century stood without a peer as the greatest of authorities on fossil mammals. It was the Natural History of the British Fossil Mammals and Birds, published in 1846, that established Sir Richard’s reputation.
Russia has produced much mammalian material, especially from the Tertiary of Odessa and Bessarabia, and from the Quaternary of northern Russia and Siberia. These have been described mainly by J. F. Brandt, A. von Nordmann, but especially by Mme. M. Pavlow of Moscow.
Forsyth-Major discovered in 1887 a fauna contemporaneous with that of Pikermi in the Island of Samos in the Mediterranean.
One of the most remarkable recent discoveries of fossil localities was that announced in 1901 by Mr. Hugh J. L. Beadnell of the Geological Survey of Egypt and Doctor C. W. Andrews of the British Museum of London, of numerous land and sea mammals of Upper Eocene and Lower Oligocene age in northern Egypt. The exposures lay about 80 miles southwest of Cairo in the Fayûm district and are the sediments of an ancient Tertiary lake, a relic of which, Birket-el-Qurun, yet remains. These beds contained ancient Hyracoidea, Sirenia, and Zeuglodontia, but above all, ancestral Proboscidea which, together with those known elsewhere, enabled Andrews to demonstrate the origin and evolutionary features of this most remarkable group of beasts. This discovery in the Fayûm lends color to the belief that Africa may have been the ancestral home of at least five of the mammalian orders, those mentioned above, together with the Embrithopoda, a group unknown elsewhere. This theory had been advanced independently by Tullberg, Stehlin, and Osborn, before the discovery in Egypt.
Another European worker of pre-eminence who wrote more broadly than the faunal studies mentioned above was W. Kowalewsky. He discussed especially the evolutionary changes of feet and teeth in ungulates, a line of research afterward developed in greater detail by the Americans, Cope and Osborn.
South America has yielded series of rich faunas which have been exploited by the great Argentinian, Florentino Ameghino, and by the Europeans, Owen, Gervais, Huxley, Von Meyer, and more recently by Burmeister and Lydekker. Later exploration and research by Hatcher and Scott of North America will be discussed further on in this paper.