Birth of Geology
Category: Other
Updated: 26 Oct 2018
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Created byEmma Loukusa
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Nicholas Steno --- 1666
Discovered shark teeth look a lot like "tongue
stones", which were triangular pieces of rock. In
1666, he declared that tongue stones did come
from once-living sharks, which people didn’t
believe at the time. Steno wondered how the
fossils can get buried into the ground. He went
Italy to study and discover the answer. He believed
that long ago, everything was fluid. Then, the
fossils traveled away from the ocean. They
settled and when molten rock invaded through
the layers and reacGeorges-Louis Leclerc --- 1707-1788
Leclerc wrote an encyclopedia called Histoire
Naturelle, though he only published 36 of 50
before he died. He wrote the encyclopedia on his
own, not on the opinions of others or the Bible. He
used Newton’s Laws of Motion to lead him to
believe that each of the planets were pieces of the
sun, caused by a comet colliding with the Sun. He
believed that the Earth was scorching until clouds
rained to create the oceans and the molten rock
turned into dry land. He also claimed tGeorges Cuvier --- 1795
Georges joined the fledgling National Museum in
Paris in 1795. When Georges studied elephant
fossils near Paris, he discovered that their bones
were very different from the elephants we know
today. He declared that the mammal had gone
extinct and new species were formed.Charles Lyell --- 1797- 1875
Lyell wanted to make geology a science, and also
didn’t want it to be based on supernatural causes,
but on catastrophic causes. Lyell believed that the
surface of the Earth was produced by gradual
changes, and went to Europe to find more evidence
to support it. He said, “Evolution took place from one
generation to the next before our very eyes, but it
worked too slowly for us to perceive.” Lyell influenced
Darwin, along with many others with his version of
geology called “unifoAlfred Wegener --- 1848
Wegener discovered that many of the same types of
species are on several continents, which are across
vast oceans. He knew that they wouldn’t be able to
travel across those oceans themselves, so he made
the theory of a supercontinent. A supercontinent is
when all of the continents were one large piece of
land, and he believed that there used to be one,
which was when the species spread. He discovered
that the reason why the continents used to be one
giant continent is because of plat
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