{"id":26066,"date":"2021-01-23T10:04:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T14:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=26066"},"modified":"2021-02-06T15:45:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T19:45:15","slug":"georges-cuvier-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/georges-cuvier-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Georges Cuvier: Theory of Catastrophism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who was Georges Cuvier? What contribution did he make to evolution? How did George Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism redefine the paradigm of extinction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georges Cuvier was a French naturalist and zoologist from the 18th century. He is also known as the “founding father of paleontology.”\u00a0Georges Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism convinced the skeptical scientific community of the reality of mass species extinctions<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read about Georges Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Georges Cuvier: Theory of Catastrophism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Until the eighteenth century, scientists and naturalists had no concept of extinction. They believed life was a long, unbroken \u201cchain of being\u201d\u2014that the animals and other life forms existing at the time were the only ones that had ever existed or would exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, in revolutionary France in the mid-1700s, a visionary naturalist, Georges Cuvier, began connecting the dots, starting with a giant molar found in New York state in 1705 and shipped to London, plus a cache of mastodon bones found in a sulfurous marsh along the Ohio River in 1739 by a French expedition. The bones seemed elephant-like, but naturalists were confused by the teeth, which were different from elephant teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cuvier went to work at the Paris Museum and began studying the Kentucky bones in 1795. A year later, he presented his findings in a ground-breaking lecture. He contended the Kentucky bones plus others found in Siberia belonged to two new species of animals, which he called \u201clost species\u201d or extinct species<\/a>, since no living animals had ever been found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued searching for lost species and soon added others to the list including a giant sloth Megatherium<\/em> and a marine reptile Monosaur<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georges Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism was that numerous species had died out over a widespread area, which he said proved that another world had previously existed and some kind of catastrophe had wiped it out.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Cuvier sought specimens from other naturalists around Europe. By 1800, he identified 23 species he believed to be extinct, including a pygmy hippo, an elk with massive antlers, a giant bear, and a giant amphibian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The excitement of finding lost-world species extended across the Atlantic. Farmhands in Newburgh, N,Y, found a giant skeleton. Philadelphia naturalist Charles Wilson Peale reconstructed it and unveiled the eleven-foot tall creature (with the tusks incorrectly pointing down instead of up) on Christmas Eve 1801. It was an American mastodon, but they called it an incognitum<\/em> and also a mammoth. Peale and his sons sent a second one from the same site to Europe for exhibition. Mammoths caught on in the popular imagination. Suddenly, people in the northeastern U.S. started describing large things as \u201cmammoth\u201d\u2014for instance, merchants advertised \u201cmammoth bread\u201d and \u201cmammoth cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Cuvier realized the Newburgh \u201cmammoth\u201d wasn\u2019t really a mammoth\u2014in an 1806 paper, he called it a mastodon and he identified four other mastodon species. Amateur \u201cfossilists,\u201d who hunted fossils for rich collectors, began uncovering other creatures. In 1812, Cuvier published a four-volume series on fossil animals, the number having grown to 49.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who was Georges Cuvier? What contribution did he make to evolution? How did George Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism redefine the paradigm of extinction? Georges Cuvier was a French naturalist and zoologist from the 18th century. He is also known as the “founding father of paleontology.”\u00a0Georges Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism convinced the skeptical scientific community of the reality of mass species extinctions. Read about Georges Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":26157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,24],"tags":[201],"class_list":["post-26066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-society","tag-the-sixth-extinction","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nGeorges Cuvier: Theory of Catastrophism - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Georges Cuvier's theory was that extinct species died out not as a result of evolution, but as a result of major catastrophes. 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