A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
Another European worker of pre-eminence who wrote more broadly than the
faunal studies mentioned above was W. Kowalewsky. He discussed
especially the evolutionary changes of feet and teeth in ungulates, a
line of research afterward developed in greater detail by the Americans,
Cope and Osborn.
South America has yielded series of rich faunas which have been
exploited by the great Argentinian, Florentino Ameghino, and by the
Europeans, Owen, Gervais, Huxley, Von Meyer, and more recently by
Burmeister and Lydekker. Later exploration and research by Hatcher and
Scott of North America will be discussed further on in this paper.
_Vertebrate Paleontology in America._
_Early Writers._—Having thus summarized paleontological progress in the
Old World, we can turn to a consideration of the work done in the New,
especially in the United States, because while the Old World
investigation has been invaluable, a science of vertebrate paleontology,
very complete both as to its zoological and geological scope and in the
extent and value of published results, could be built exclusively upon
the discoveries and researches made by Americans. The science of
vertebrate paleontology may be said to have had its beginnings in North
America with the activities of Thomas Jefferson, who, like Franklin,
felt so strong an interest in scientific pursuits that even the graver
duties of the highest office in the gift of the American people could
not deter him from them. When in 1797 Jefferson came to be inaugurated
as vice-president of the United States, he brought with him to
Philadelphia not only his manuscript but the actual fossil bones upon
which it was based. Again in 1801 he was greatly interested in the
Shawangunk mastodon, despite heavy cares of state, and in 1808 made part
of the executive mansion in Washington serve as a paleontological
laboratory, displaying therein for study the bones of proboscideans and
their contemporaries which the Big Bone Lick of Kentucky had produced.
Jefferson’s work would not, perhaps, have been epoch-making were it not
for its unique chronological position in the annals of the science.
Jefferson was followed by another man—this time one whose diverging
lines of interest led him not into the realm of political service, but
of art, for Rembrandt Peale possessed an enviable reputation among the
early painters of America. Peale published in 1802 an account of the
skeleton of the “mammoth,” really the mastodon, _M. americanus_,
speaking of it as a nondescript carnivorous animal of immense size found
in America. It was because of the form of the molar teeth that Peale
said of it: “If this animal was indeed carnivorous, which I believe
cannot be doubted, though we may as philosophers regret it, as men we
cannot but thank Heaven that its whole generation is probably extinct.”
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