BIOL-3350 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: James Hutton, Uniformitarianism, Natural Theology
Document Summary
Life was seen as a hierarchy from lower to higher forms plants animals humans. This was known as the great chain of being. Fixed hierarchy but not useful for classifying diversity of life at a finer scale. Carolus linnaeus came up with rules for naming species and sorting them into different groups. Taxonomy - the science of describing, naming, and classifying species of living or fossil organisms. Stratigraphy - the study of layering in rock (stratification). It was realized that the anatomy of species adapts to its way of life and effects where it is located on the chain of being. Natural theology - argument that plants and animals are built with all kinds of contrivances necessary for its own existence and propagation. Most startling discoveries were of fossils of species that no longer lived at the sites they were unearthed at. Extinction - the permanent loss of a species.
