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Accordingnto Wolfram Research, Cuvier’s students dressed up in devil costumesnand woke up their professor in the middle of the night. They chanted,n“Cuvier, Cuvier, we have come to eat you!”
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nApparentlynnot the least bit fazed, Cuvier looked around at the “devils” andnsaid, All animals with horns are herbivores. You cannot eat me.”nThen he went back to sleep.
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n(I’mnsure you know that herbivores are animals that eat only plants. Somenexamples of horned herbivores are rhinos, sheep, goats, bison,ncattle, giraffes, muskox, antelopes.)
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nGeorgesnCuvier, born on this date in 1769, was a French zoologist (anscientist who studies animals). He helped to establish two new fieldsnof study: comparative anatomy (studying the similarities andndifferences between body structures) and paleontology (the study ofnprehistoric life).
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Cuviernhad strong opinions on all sorts of biological and geologicalntheories. For example, he thought that most fossils were mineralizednbones of animals that no longer existed. Well, he was right—andnthis seems pretty obvious to us now, but in the late 1700s, manynpeople believed that no species had ever gone extinct. Cuvier thoughtnthat the fossil record showed that animals didn’t change and evolvenover time—that new species suddenly appeared and just as suddenlyn(later) disappeared. He brought up the fact that mummified humans,nibises (a kind of bird), and cats are just like modern humans,nibises, and cats, and he said that that was evidence that animalsndon’t evolve. A scientist named Lamarck shrugged away this point,npointing out that the Egyptian mummies Cuvier examined are only a fewnthousand years old, not hundreds of thousands of years old (or, wenknow now, millions of years old)—and, Lamarck argued, evolutionnhappened too slowly to show much change after only a few thousandnyears. On this point, Cuvier was wrong and Lamarck was right. (But onnother discussion points, Lamarck was wrong and Cuvier right!) n
Cuviernhad strong opinions on all sorts of biological and geologicalntheories. For example, he thought that most fossils were mineralizednbones of animals that no longer existed. Well, he was right—andnthis seems pretty obvious to us now, but in the late 1700s, manynpeople believed that no species had ever gone extinct. Cuvier thoughtnthat the fossil record showed that animals didn’t change and evolvenover time—that new species suddenly appeared and just as suddenlyn(later) disappeared. He brought up the fact that mummified humans,nibises (a kind of bird), and cats are just like modern humans,nibises, and cats, and he said that that was evidence that animalsndon’t evolve. A scientist named Lamarck shrugged away this point,npointing out that the Egyptian mummies Cuvier examined are only a fewnthousand years old, not hundreds of thousands of years old (or, wenknow now, millions of years old)—and, Lamarck argued, evolutionnhappened too slowly to show much change after only a few thousandnyears. On this point, Cuvier was wrong and Lamarck was right. (But onnother discussion points, Lamarck was wrong and Cuvier right!) nn
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Otherntopics of inquiry during Cuvier’s life include catastrophism (thenidea that lifeforms are sometimes impacted and even driven tonextinction by natural catastrophes), stratigraphy (the idea thatnolder sedimentary rocks lay under younger sedimentary rocknlayers—which helps us figure out the relative age of fossils foundninside those rocks), and the “correlation of parts” (the ideanthat the five bones in a bat’s wing are related to the five fingersnin a human hand, and so on).
Otherntopics of inquiry during Cuvier’s life include catastrophism (thenidea that lifeforms are sometimes impacted and even driven tonextinction by natural catastrophes), stratigraphy (the idea thatnolder sedimentary rocks lay under younger sedimentary rocknlayers—which helps us figure out the relative age of fossils foundninside those rocks), and the “correlation of parts” (the ideanthat the five bones in a bat’s wing are related to the five fingersnin a human hand, and so on).n
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nIt’sninteresting to me to see that scientists who are brilliant,nknowledgeable—even ahead of their time—can still be very wrongnabout things. We can’t judge ideas based only on how highly esteemednthe person saying them is—we have to look for evidence, andnsometimes we have to wait years for enough evidence. Eventually, datanshowed that some of Cuvier’s ideas were right and that others of hisnideas were wrong. (Just remember, though, if Cuvier had had thenluxury of being born in the twentieth or twenty-first century, whennsoooooo much more is known about biology and sooooooooo many morenfossils have been found and dug up, he would almost assuredly seeneye-to-eye with today’s scientists on these matters.)
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nAlsonon this date:
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nAnniversary of the establishment of the state of Franklin
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nUkrainian Flag Day
