Fossils
Year of Discovery: 1669
What Is It? Fossils are the remains of past living organisms.
Who Discovered It? Nicholas Steno
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
The only way we can learn about the ancient past is to examine fossil remains of now
extinct plants and animals and try to re-create that long-gone life and environment. Scientists can only do this if they correctly interpret the fossil remains that are dug from ancient
rock layers.
That process began with Nicholas Steno. He provided the first true definition of the
word “fossil” and the first understanding of the origin and nature of fossils. Steno’s work
represents the beginning of our modern process of dating and studying fossils and the development of modern geology.
How Was It Discovered?
For 2,000 years, anything dug from the earth was called a fossil. By the middle ages,
fossil had come to be used for only those things made of stone that were dug from the earth
and that looked remarkably like living creatures. Many thought these fossils were God’s
practice attempts to create living things. Some claimed they were the Devil’s attempts to
imitate God. Some believed they were the remains of drowned animals from Noah’s flood.
No one thought them to be of scientific value.
Nicholas Steno was born Niels Stensen in 1638 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He changed
his name to its Latinized form in 1660 when he moved first to Paris and then to Italy to study
medicine. Steno was a student of Galileo’s experimental and mathematical approach to science and focused his studies on human muscular systems and on using math and geometry
to show how muscles contracted and moved bones and the skeleton. Steno gained considerable fame in Italy for these anatomical studies.
In October 1666, two fishermen caught what was described as “a huge shark” near the
town of Livorno, Italy. Because of its enormous size, Duke Ferdinand ordered that its head
to be sent to Steno for study. Steno dutifully dissected the head, focusing on the musculature
of the shark’s deadly jaw.
25