218 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



who have consecrated their research to the fossil verte- 

 brates has been in the main of a high order. 



At first, as has been emphasized, this work was largely 

 morphological, dealing both with the individual skeletal 

 elements and later with the bony framework as a whole. 

 Then came the endeavor to clothe the bones with sinews 

 and with flesh to imagine, in other words, the life- 

 appearance of the ages-departed form with such of its 

 habits as could be deduced from structure of body, tooth, 

 and limb. Next came the working out of systematic 

 series of vertebrates and their marshalling into species, 

 genera, and larger groups, and much time was thus spent, 

 especially when rapid discovery brought a continual 

 stream of new forms before the systematist, and hence 

 some appreciation of the countless hosts of bygone crea- 

 tures which peopled the world in the geologic past. This 

 systematic work, however, was based upon the most 

 painstaking morphologic comparisons and so the science 

 was still within the scope of comparative anatomy. 



In connection with taxonomic research came increas- 

 ingly tangible evidence in favor of the law of evolution ; 

 investigators turned to the working out of phyletic series 

 showing the actual record of the successive evolutionary 

 changes that the various races had undergone. Coupled 

 with this evolutionary evidence came an increased atten- 

 tion to the sequential occurrence in successive geologic 

 strata, and the stratigraphic distribution of vertebrates 

 became known with greater and greater detail. Then 

 followed the assemblage of faunas, which brought the 

 study of the fossil forms within the realm of historical 

 geology, rather than being the mere phylogeny of a single 

 race, and the value of vertebrate fossils as horizon 

 markers became more and more appreciated by the stra- 

 tigrapher. They serve to supplement the knowledge 

 gained from the invertebrates, and in this connection are 

 especially valuable in that they often give data concern- 

 ing continental formations about which invertebrate 

 paleontology is largely silent. 



of Vertebrate Paleontology in Europe. 



To those who had been nurtured in the belief in a rela- 

 tively recent creation covering in its entirety a period of 



