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  • Strange Science: The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology andBiology

    From the page: The ancient Greeks realized that species changed over time, and that some fossils belonged to organisms that had once lived in very different environments. These findings, however, didn't survive the subsequent centuries intact. To medieval and even Renaissance Europeans,... more

    Reviewed by TouchOfEvil Jan 05 2009, 05:16am ( 65 reviews ) • strangescience.net

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  • Rated by ian-atkinson on Aug 13, 12:56pm

    A superb site packed with information.

  • Rated by Lotus1150 on Apr 24 2009, 9:29pm

    From the page: The ancient Greeks realized that species changed over time, and that some fossils belonged to organisms that had once lived in very different environments.

  • Rated by TouchOfEvil on Jan 05 2009, 5:16am

    From the page: The ancient Greeks realized that species changed over time, and that some fossils belonged to organisms that had once lived in very different environments. These findings, however, didn't survive the subsequent centuries intact. To medieval and even Renaissance Europeans, fossils were steeped in mystery and superstition, although the Renaissance saw a surge of interest in the natural world, and in collecting curiosities. Some aristocrats even published descriptions of their collections, like this sample of flora and fauna from the court of Emperor Rudolf II. Collections often consisted of misidentified or forged specimens, but we should be grateful for these curiosity cabinets just the same - they were the forerunners of modern museums. Strange ideas didn't end with the Middle Ages. Savants took centuries to unravel the process of fossilization, many of them suspecting that nature fashioned odd stones just for fun. Living animals often proved as puzzling as fossils when scholars had to make sense of the weird specimens that explorers brought back to Europe from other continents. And belief in monsters and omens persisted well into the Renaissance, fueled in part by the religious tensions of the Reformation. But over time, fascination with oddities led to a better understanding of the history of life. Starting in the late 18th century, Georges Buffon and later Georges Cuvier suggested that the earth was much older than anyone had previously imagined. By studying the fossil record, 19th-century geologist John Phillips divided the ages of the earth into three eras: Paleozoic (old life), Mesozoic (middle life) and Cenozoic (new life). Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species describing natural selection as a driving force in evolution. William Buckland and Gideon Mantell published the first descriptions of a certain group fossil reptiles, later to be given the much more popular name of dinosaurs by Sir Richard Owen.

  • Rated by Doktor-Caligari on Aug 11 2008, 10:04am

    Lots of strangeness here, if you go looking in the galleries. More than just comedy, this site shows the reaction of the European imagination to what must have seemed utterly alien (ie, the animals of africa and the new world) I suspect that if we ever find life on another planet, the first few depictions wouldn't be so different.

  • Rated by seebrentwrite on Jul 28 2008, 2:02am

    Compendium of Natural Oddities

  • Rated by photophor on May 31 2008, 7:01am

    Lucid if eclectic lead into story of how 'trench finds' (sc. fossils) gradually got to be understood.

  • Rated by LOUISCYPHER on May 20 2008, 1:23pm

    Love this site, especially like all the old monster drawings, they must been smokin' some funky stuff to come up with those.