VI 



ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VERTEBRATE 

 PALEONTOLOGY 



By RICHARD SWANN LULL 



Introduction. 



UNLIKE its sister science of Invertebrate Paleon- 

 tology, which has been approached so largely from 

 the viewpoint of stratigraphic geology, that of the 

 vertebrates is essentially a biologic science, having its 

 inception in the masterly work of Cuvier, who is also to 

 be regarded as the founder of comparative anatomy. 

 For long decades, vertebrate paleontology was simply a 

 branch of comparative anatomy or morphology in that it 

 dealt almost exclusively with the form and other pecul- 

 iarities of fossil bones and teeth, often in a more or less 

 fragmentary condition, very little or no attention being 

 paid to any other system of the creature's anatomy. 

 Distribution both in space and in time was recorded, but 

 the value of vertebrates in stratigraphy was still to be 

 appreciated and has hardly yet come into its own. It is 

 readily seen, therefore, that the two departments of 

 paleontology did not enlist the same workers or even the 

 same type of investigators, for while the two sciences have 

 much in common and should have more, the vertebratist 

 must, above all else, be a morphologist, with a keen 

 appreciation of form, and a mind capable of retaining 

 endless structural details and of visualizing as a whole 

 what may be known only in part. The initial work of the 

 brilliant Cuvier set so high a standard of preparedness 

 and mental equipment that as a consequence, the number 

 of those engaged in vertebrate research has never been 

 large as compared with the workers in some other 

 branches of science, but the results achieved by the few 



