Charles Schuchert— Historical Geology, 1818-1918. 99 



holds that the first name applied to a given form shall 

 stand against all later names given to the same organism. 



Catastrophic Period. — With the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century there started a new era in paleontology, 

 and this was the time when the foundations of the science 

 were laid. The period continued for six decades, or until 

 the time of the Origin of Species. Marsh says that now 

 "method replaced disorder, and systematic study super- 

 seded casual observation." Fossils were accurately 

 determined, comparisons were made with living forms, 

 and the species named according to the binomial system. 

 However, every species, recent and extinct, was regarded 

 as a separate creation, and because of the usually sharp 

 separation of the superposed fossil faunas and floras, 

 these were held to have been destroyed through a series 

 of periodic catastrophes of which the Noachian deluge 

 was the last. 



Lamarck between 1802 and 1806 described the Tertiary 

 shells of the Paris basin. Comparing' them with the liv- 

 ing forms, he saw that most of the fossils were of extinct 

 species, and in this way he came to be the founder of 

 modern invertebrate paleontology. He also maintained 

 after 1801 that life has been continuous since its origin 

 and that nature has been uniform in the course of its 

 development. Marsh adds : 



"His researches on the invertebrate fossils of the Paris Basin, 

 although less striking, were not less important than those of 

 Cuvier on the vertebrates ; while the conclusions he derived from 

 them form the basis of modern biology." 



"Lamarck was the prophetic genius, half a century in advance 

 of his time. ' ' 



Cuvier established comparative anatomy and verte- 

 brate paleontology, and was one of the first to point out 

 that fossil animals are nearly all extinct forms. He 

 came to the latter conclusion in 1796 through a study of 

 fossil elephants found in Europe. "Cuvier enriched 

 the animal kingdom by the introduction of fossil forms 

 among the living, bringing all together into one compre- 

 hensive system." This opened to him entirely new 

 views respecting the theory of the earth, and he devoted 

 more than twenty-five years to developing the theories 

 of special creation and catastrophism, described in his 

 Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe. 

 "With all his knowledge of the earth, he could not free 



