Channels, Spring 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 2 • Number 2 Page 69 exploration, and migration for proof that this idea was no longer plausible. Explorations across the world in places like the African continent seemed to reveal most of the “large quadrupeds” as already described by indigenous peoples. The natives told tales of animals to the explorers who, in turn, sought out the animals described to them. Cuvier also noted that many of the ancient cultures had stories about “large quadrupeds”. For example, the Romans became accustomed to seeing animals like the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and giraffes in the gladiatorial games. The migration patterns of animals, especially of “large quadrupeds”, made it impossible for them not to have been seen by both explorers and natives. Cuvier’s idea of extinction dispelled the notion of undiscovered “large quadrupeds” and that animals existed before the appearance of mankind. The prehumen world that Cuvier created became a fantastic world populated with a variety of mysterious forms. In this new primordial world, the ideas of Hutton, further propagated by Charles Lyell and Cuvier’s the concept of extinction, set the stage for Charles Darwin’s ideas. When Darwin finally published the Origin of Species , most of the scientific community accepted his theory of evolution from a common ancestor. A newer and younger generation of scientists were enthusiastic about accepting Darwin’s ideas. Darwin’s theory freed them from the old order of believing in the supernatural. Sir Richard Owen, a child of the old school of thought, was caught in the middle of a scientific revolution. Before Darwin published Origins, and even before Owen was considered the English Cuvier, the discovery of ancient reptilian fossils began to spark the imagination. Gideon Mantell’s discoveries of several large saurian like creatures caught the attention of Reverend William Buckland and Cuvier. One of Mantell’s fossil finds was a set of teeth. Cuvier at first glance examined the teeth and determined the source to be a rhinoceros. Mantell’s dissatisfaction with Cuvier’s response forced him to look elsewhere for answers to the identification of the teeth. This led him to a museum collection where he found the teeth had an uncanny resemblance to those of modern iguanas. He named the animal belonging to the teeth Iguanodon and thought it was the forbearer of the present-day iguanas. Mantell reconstructed his newly discovered animal to be a giant counterpart of what he thought was its modern descendent (Figure 1). Comparing the size of the teeth of living iguanas to those of Iguanodon, Mantell, Buckland, and Cuvier estimated the size of the ancient ancestor to absurd proportions. Calculations ranged from a modest sixty feet to almost two-hundred feet long. Mantell also discovered a femur belonging to what Buckland would later call Megalosaurus . The size estimation for Megalosaurus was about sixty-five feet in length and was dwarfed by its counterpart Iguanodon . Cuvier’s comparison of the skull of Reverend William Conybeare’s Mosasaurus to that of a monitor lizard placed it into the class reptilia. Iguanodon and Megalosaurus followed suit and they were placed in the same class. Enter In Dinosauria: Four-Legged Terrible Lizards Sir Richard Owen, finally stepping up to the stage, fought against the teachings of Lamarckism and later Darwinian evolution. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck put forth his idea of inheritance through acquired characteristics. According to his thinking, animals survived because certain individuals had better traits for survival. These traits would then be passed onto its offspring. Eventually this would lead to an animal that was more complex than its ancestry. Owen saw an opportunity to snuff out the flames of Lamarckism with the use of