Discovery of extinction
Even a small child playing with a dinosaur toy knows that there have been creatures in the world that no longer exist. Until a few centuries ago, this was not even in anyone's imagination. Aristotle's "History of Animals" and Pliny's "Natural History" are some of the oldest books, but when the tenth edition of the "system of federations" by Carl Linnaeus (who created the system of biological naming) was published in 1758 I mentioned 36 species of scarab beetles, 34 species of snails or 16 species of flat fish but there was only one species. Those that exist now.
Museums in London, Paris, Berlin were filled with strange creatures that no one had ever seen. From the remains of living things such as trilobite, bellumite, and amoebae. From Siberia, memetic structures also reached Western Europe, but these creatures are no more. It took a long time to come up with this idea and this revolutionary first came to the mind of Cuvier, a naturalist who has been a very important figure in the history of science after seeing the teeth of the American Mastodonnon in France.
Charles Le Moin set out with a contingent of 400 soldiers to fight the local Chakasa. They found a 1739-and-a-half-foot-long thigh bone, a huge ivory and a few large teeth in a swampy area near the Ohio River. This was the Big Bone Lake area in what is now Kentucky. The mission was doomed to failure, but the bones reached France. This led to a debate. After all, who could it be? Someone suggested they were the bones of separate animals, but it was called "the unknown animal of Ohio." When US President Thomas Jefferson sent William and Clark to the west of the United States, Jefferson hoped to find an animal that still roams the area. "Nature never lets any living thing die," he wrote. Nothing in this great system is so weak as to break. We will find this animal. ”
The 25-year-old arrived in Paris in 1795. Half a century had passed since the bones found on the banks of the Ohio River reached Paris. He found work at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. He presented his research in a public lecture on April 4, 1796, after analyzing the museum's collection.
He started his lecture with saloons and elephants from Africa. He then went on to make discoveries in the United States, Argentina, Germany and Russia. By comparing all of them, he came to the conclusion that the four different animals found here are the ones that are no more. And then he went on to say, "If these four weren't there, I don't know how many more." What were these ancient worlds like? What revolution ended them? ” It was a terrifying lecture. A new idea Erasure is a fact.
It was one thing to acknowledge the extinction of a species, but to think that there have been entirely lost worlds, in which there were different species. It was not easy to digest. Some went in search of it. Being in Paris was a good place for him. Its soft hills (for which the Plaster of Paris is famous) had a lot in it. It was common for miners to find strange bones. Curious people used to collect them without knowing what they were collecting. With the help of one such person, they paired another endangered animal, a medium-sized animal called the Mont Marte.
They started collecting them from all over Europe. Because of his popularity, people started sending him sketches of bones and models. Within four years of this lecture, by 1800, he had identified 23 species at the Fossil Zoo. The dwarf hippo, the twelve horned horns, the giant bear found in a cave in Germany. Six different species of Mont Marte were also found. A rabbit-sized marsupial that was a very bold claim because marsupials did not exist in Europe.
"If so much has been found so soon, I don't know what secrets the earth has hidden," Kovey said. Other museums began inviting Covey to analyze his collection.
As new animals were being introduced, the story was getting weirder. Large salamanders on land? Flying reptiles?
The discovery of extinction was no small news. Now the strange bones found on the ground could be seen with a new eye. The remains of animals found in the United States were named by Kovey as Mastadon in his 1806 paper. Four more species were discovered. In 1812 he published an encyclopedia of four volumes of fossils.
Fossil
A new profession came into being. The "fossils" were people who searched for hidden remains in the ground and sold them to rich people. Marie Anning, a young woman, found a strange skull in Britain. A four-foot-long jaw that looked like a plus. It was named Akthayusar (a fish-like lizard). The same woman later discovered even more strange traces. They were named Plymouths (almost lizards).
The field of stratography was new, but it was understood that separate layers of rock formed in different periods of the earth. Remains of the Plymouth, Akthiusar and another type, which has not yet been named, were found in what was then called the Secondary (now called the Mesozoic Era). The remains of two more strange animals were next. After going to the UK and analyzing them, a strange idea came to Covey's mind.
Covey's new and untouched idea was "there is a direction to life." The animals we find near the bottom are very similar to the animals that exist today. As we dig up and reach the old rocks, they become more and more different, other living things begin to appear. Giant lizards begin to appear instead of mammals. This arrangement is not just like that.
Where do the species come from? Covey was not interested. His focus was on extinction. Lamarck was a senior colleague at the museum with Covey. Seeing all this, they came to another new conclusion. It was different from Kovi's extinction. He thought that the idea of extinction was wrong. Living things adapt to changing conditions. This is the real reason why all these changes are visible. When the environment changes, it also changes these living beings.
The battle between the revolutionary idea of the extinction of the Cove and the revolutionary idea of Lamarck's changing species was now to take place for many years to come.
Both Covey and Lamarck had different views on the history of life, half wrong and half right. It was the first step in getting acquainted with a new and far greater reality. According to Covey, Mastadon was wiped out on the border of human civilization and that is exactly what happened. According to Lamarck, he had a relationship with a modern elephant, and that's exactly what happened.
No one is left ... That part of Covey's idea was right.
Everyone changes ... That part of Lamarck's idea was right.
Erasing and changing is part of the same series of life cycles, lost worlds are deeper than anyone can imagine. Evidence was gathering. The dots were yet to be added. The next big idea was to come from Scottish geologist Charles Lyell. The secret of the teeth found in the swampy ground by the weary defeated army was slowly beginning to unravel.
Attached is the structure of the American Mastadon. It is very easy for anyone today to know its history. Even a small child playing with a dinosaur toy is aware of the reality of extinction. It's not too old that no one in the world could have imagined it.
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