GEOL 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Megalonyx, Georges Cuvier, Principle Of Faunal Succession
7 Dec 2017
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Total disappearance of a species or taxa. Before 1800, the idea that any animal had become extinct was unthinkable, a violation of god"s benevalance and providence. Discoveries of the tusks of mammoths led to all sorts of fanciful reconstructions of what animal left them. Big teeth found by english settlers in kentucky in the 1740s-50s were initially identified as belonging to the american incognitum (latin for unknown) - a pseudoelephant" that was a bloodthirsty carnivore. Firmly believed in the great chain of being, and was convinced that the. American incognitum was living in the as yet unexplored american northwest. In 1799, jefferson described fossil claws and attributed them to a great lion that he named megalonyx. He even sent lewis and clark out to find it. If this animal had once existed, it is probably on this view of the movement of nature that it still exists -- thomas j.
