Channels, Spring 2018

Page 68 Oldham • A Four-Legged Megalosaurus The Dawn of Paleontology: The Formation of a Paradigm Little did Knight know that more than fifty years later his paintings of active dinosaurs would turn out to be correct. His works inspired the minds and captured the hearts of future generations of paleontologists. To have an understanding of the current view of dinosaurs—let alone Knight’s view—a careful examination of history is required. During the beginnings of paleontology in the late eighteenth century, fossil organisms were discovered that were thought to represent modern life. This became the consensus because of a lack of knowledge of the unexplored world. The blank spaces on the globe made it difficult for strong conclusions to be made about what fauna and flora that might exist in those empty expanses. Interpretations of scripture also played an important role in science at the time. Most naturalists who believed in a literal Noahic flood felt that animals found in the present must represent life before the great deluge. In other words, if a fossil organism was found, then it must be similar in form to a present-day organism somewhere in the world. This view is slowly changing due to the recognition of immense thicknesses of strata around the world. James Hutton in his book Theory of the Earth heralded in the idea of uniformitarianism. Hutton sought to reconcile the massively thick strata in a framework of natural means. He felt the present processes of sedimentation characterized the rates and processes of the past. The thicker the strata, the longer the period of time it represented. In the midst of this changing view, Baron Georges Cuvier put forth an idea that animals could go extinct. Known as the father of modern vertebrate paleontology, stratigraphy, and comparative anatomy, Cuvier’s conclusion for extinction sprouted from his study of elephants. His study of comparing the skulls of modern elephants with those of a mammoth and mastodon led to several different deductions. The first being that the African and Asiatic elephants were not the same species but related to each other like sheep and goats. The second being that the mammoth and mastodon were different from the two modern species of elephants. Also, like their modern counterparts, although extremely different, the two were still closely related. Cuvier’s conclusion led him to believe that these two ancient elephant forms vanished from the earth. His argument for extinction was strengthened with the discovery of a skeleton of a strange creature from Paraguay. Cuvier’s anatomical comparisons of this creature, which he would call Megatherium , had no modern relations. The closest comparison he came up with was that of the edentates, (now renamed xenarthra) which included armadillos, sloths, anteaters, pangolins, and aardvarks (all of which have been reassigned to their own groups). The Megatherium shared several characteristics with armadillos, sloths, and anteaters, making it a strange chimera. However, this peculiar beast more closely resembled tree sloths. Cuvier (1796) said this about the new curiosity, It adds to the numerous facts that tells us that the animals of the ancient world all differ from those we see on earth today; for it is scarcely probable that, if this animal still existed, such a remarkable species could hitherto have escaped the researches of naturalists. The lacunae on the map or in the records appeared to suggest the possibility for “large quadrupeds” like the mammoth or Megatherium to exist. Cuvier turned to ancient history,