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
In paleontology, Osborn’s researches have been largely with the Reptilia
and Mammalia, partly morphological, but also taxonomic and evolutional.
Faunistic studies have also been made of the mammals. Of his published
volumes the most important are, first, the Age of Mammals (1910), in
which he treats not of evolutionary series of phylogenies, but of faunas
and their origin, migrations, and extinctions, and of the correlation of
Old and New World Tertiary deposits and their contents. Men of the Old
Stone Age (1916) is an exhaustive treatise and is the first full and
authoritative American presentation of what has been discovered up to
the present time throughout the world in regard to human prehistory. In
his latest volume, The Origin and Evolution of Life (1917), Osborn
presents a new energy conception of evolution and heredity as against
the prevailing matter and form conceptions. In this volume there is
summed up the whole story of the origin and evolution of life on earth
up to the appearance of man. This last book is novel in its conceptions,
but it is too early as yet to judge of the acceptance of Osborn’s theses
by his fellow workers in science.
Since the death of Professor Marsh, Osborn has served as vertebrate
paleontologist to the United States Geological Survey, and has in charge
the carrying through to completion of the many monographs proposed by
his distinguished predecessor. One of these, that on the horned
dinosaurs, has been completed by Hatcher and Lull (1907), another on the
stegosaurian dinosaurs has been carried forward by C. W. Gilmore of the
United States National Museum, while under Osborn’s own hand are the
memoirs on the titanotheres (aided by W. K. Gregory), the horses, and
the sauropod dinosaurs. Of these, the first, when it shall have been
completed, promises to be the most monumental and exhaustive study of a
group of fossil organisms ever undertaken.
As a leader in science, a teacher and administrator, Professor Osborn’s
rank is high among the leading vertebratists. He is remarkably
successful in his choice of assistants and in stimulating them in their
productiveness so that their combined results form a very considerable
share of the later literature in America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account