Field of Science

Showing posts with label Cabinets of curiosities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cabinets of curiosities. Show all posts

Alexander von Humboldt and the Hand-Beast

The German naturalist F. W. H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is today remembered as great geographer and explorer (maybe one of the most common names found on topographic maps is even Humboldt), but his education focused on mining engineering (and economy, as wished by his mother) and he made some important contributions to geology (for example the coined the term "formation") - however despite his interests in earth sciences, his contributions to palaeontology are rare and almost forgotten...

His geological education made him aware of the controversy surrounding the origin of fossil molluscs (still considered more as curiosities than valuable stratigraphic tools) and large vertebrates found in the Permafrost soils of Siberia. In 1789 he had the opportunity to have a look on the first fossil pterosaur skeleton.
During his famous expedition to America (visited from 1799 to 1804) he collected fossil bones and sent them to palaeontologist Cuvier. He also collected fossil molluscs for fellow German geologist Von Buch, and he even directed paleontological excavations near Bogotá.

In 1833 the school director and amateur archaeologist F. Sickler noted some strange depressions in a slab used in the laying of the foundation wall of a small garden house in the village of Hildburghausen (Germany). The slab was badly damaged and Sickler was not sure what this strange fossil may be. Sickler promised to the workers in the local sandstone quarries a reward if they could provide a better specimen - and so one year later Sickler was able to publish a short account on a new slab with three distinct types of footprints, maybe from some ancient amphibious animal. He "invited" the greatest geological minds of the time (including Humboldt) to study this strange fossil. The discovery excited a larger public, as some imprints resembled a human hand - today these ichnofossils are known as Chirotherium ("the hand-beast"). 

Fig.1. A mid-nineteenth century fanciful view of the unknown Triassic trackmakers: a labyrinthodont amphibian leaves a Chirotherium trackway watched by some primitive reptiles (from the Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins archive, Natural History Museum, London).
Fig.5. The mid-nineteenth century fanciful view of the trackmakers: a labyrinthodont amphibian (centre) leaves a Chirotherium trackway watched by dicynodonts (left) and rhynchosaurs (right).
(B.W. Hawkins archive,The NaturalHistory Museum, London), - See more at: http://historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com/2011/01/ichnofacies-associations-of-bletterbach.html#sthash.l4qakhYF.dpuf

In a note read to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France in the year 1835 Humboldt made public his opinion on the mysterious fossils of Hildburghausen. He considered the imprints as real fossil trackways (some geologist, like Von Buch doubted at first this interpretation) and he considered the ancient trackmaker more similar to a mammal than an amphibian. Based on the toe configuration, Humboldt imagined at first a marsupial, possibly an arboreal possum-like creature (this idea was based on the imprint of - what Humboldt tough - an opposable toe in the Chirotherium tracks). Despite an expert in reptilian anatomy (he had observed caimans along the shores of the Orinoco and studied a Nile crocodile in an Italian collection) he didn´t recognize any similarities between Chirotherium and modern reptilian footprints. The identification of Chirotherium as fossil mammal tracks was at the time a scientific sensation, at it would have significantly pushed mammals into deep time (from the Tertiary to the Triassic). 
However Humboldt´s analysis attracted little interest by contemporary naturalists and the opinion of British palaeontologist Richard Owen - Chirotherium made by a larger reptile - prevailed. In fact even Humboldt in his later work "Cosmos" (published in various volumes between1845-1862) doesn´t mention his research on ichnofossils and even notes that the earliest mammals are found only in Jurassic sediments.
 
It´s not entirely clear why Humboldt, famous for his general interest in all earth sciences, showed so little interest in this subject. Maybe he considered his knowledge too limited, as his preliminary analysis was based only on a specimen displayed in the mineralogical cabinet of the Natural History Museum of Berlin, to engage in a scientific discussion. Maybe he was also more interested in presenting this puzzle to the scientific community, awaiting that others should solve this ancient mystery.

Bibliography:

KNOLL, F. (2009): Alexander von Humboldt and the hand-beast: A contribution to paleontology from the last universal scholar. C.R. Palevol Vol.8: 427-436

Cabinets of curiosities #5: The Last of Their Kind

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Presumably 99% of all the species that inhabited earth in the geological past went extinct, some during mass extinctions, most however slowly but inescapable, even if some described creatures or monsters and fossils apparently never existed.
A strange flightless bird became an icon of extinction - endemic on Mauritius today only fragments survive in our museums and as cruel aftermath his appearance became soon distorted by humans after his extinction.
The role of human induced extinction during the Pleistocene is still discussed - for example for the strange marsupial lion, for the recent past however it is well documented, especially for species confined on archipelagos or islands like in the Arctic or Japan or Tasmania.
But also species with billions of individuals were hunted down so efficiently that they went extinct in a geological blip.

Today at least we care and try to minimize the impact of our society on the environment and species richness; however it is clear that it is necessary to assign priorities, not only for animal, but also plant species.


Cabinets of curiosities #4: Classification and Collection

The naturalists of the Renaissance were obsessed with the idea to collect and describe all the secrets of earth, polymaths by passion, however only some men achieved so much confidence in this task as Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) as he avidly collected and immortalized such things as words, animals, plants and rocks. Other tried to classify catastrophes and explain the origin of earthquakes.
But not only nature, also time should be distinguishably and labelled adequately - in a letter to his fellow colleague the Italian geologist Giovanni Arduino (1714-1795) proposed a classification of rocks according to their supposed order of temporal deposition, scheme in part used still today.
Men was and is a wanderer as he is a collector of strange things - some people will do everything to achieve a collection rich in rare books and precious specimen, there are even (presumed) bad and fool(ed) geologists.
It is wonderful when collections can be completed with rare specimens - the discovery of the only known colour photographs of the great earthquake of San Francisco in 1906 is an extraordinary event.

Image from "La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso" by Arduino Scilla, 1670.

Cabinets of curiosities #3: The shoulders of giants

Standing on the shoulders of giants we can see further, so let's remember the naturalist on which shoulders modern research stands and visit the 30# installment of the Giants Shoulders Carnival or the Carnival of Evolution! - a lot to read and more to learn.

Early and modern Geologists tried to understand earth in both two dimensions - the visible landscape, three dimensions - the bedrock and even in four dimensions - time.
A common topographic map displays the feature of the planet in 2D, a beautiful seafloor map, like the 1977 World Ocean Floor Map gives the impression of a 3D landscape, and a geological map finally encompassing the fourth dimension, the deep time.
But geologists didn't map and collect only rocks from earth and fossils from the past, but were also fascinated by rocks falling from the sky!

Early reports of geological wonders often display beautiful artwork, an art that today has become rare. However collections of dead-trees documents today are available also for a silica-carbon compound powered by moving electrons: Historic texts in Geology: ePubs by Robert Cody.

And speaking of change - there is something new in Earth Science blogging, Earth Science Erratics will be hopefully be scattered in future with a lot of erratics and blog entries of enthusiastic field geologists, maybe adventures like experienced by "Rock" Mary Anning.

And finally, let´s also remember the modern research on climate change, the time has come, the Walrus said...

"Going to remote places and getting your hands dirty was a new way to understand the processes that shape the earth, and De Saussure gave it a name: Geology!"



Image from Mundus subterraneus by Athanasius Kircher, 1678.

Cabinets of curiosities #2: The Freak Show

The apparent chaos displayed in the Cabinets of Curiosities was in fact essential part of them, forcing the visitor to explore every corner and to delve into a subject, to find and touch the strangest things, and experience a cool chill by discovering hidden abomination.
Sometime the monsters were of natural origin, however also strange art objects were exposed.


The host of the cabinet was glad to conduct the visitors' trough his collection, enjoying their astonishment, take for example the third installment of the new Boneyard to explore the hidden corners of Palaeontology in the Web, and also the Accretionary Wedge… Trick or Treat..
And speaking of fear, who don't remember the creepy plastic - saurs of our youth? Generations of children scared their parents with these monstrosities; today such jewels lurk in many collections.
Other abominations are old or new Monster-movies, the best geo-related movies were selected by Jessica Ball and assembled on the brandnew Magma cum Laude AGU-Blog.
LOOK OUT for The Monolith Monsters, El monstruo de los volcanes, Fantasia and Tremors...

For centuries it was thougth to be impossible, stories of falling rocks were considered fairy tales, and presumed "thunderstones" displayed well guarded in Cabinets of Curiosities, as strange and scary messengers from other worlds...

Cabinets of curiosities #1: The jolly old beast

During the European Renaissance (14th to the 17th century) kings, aristocrats, rich merchants and scholars collected curiosities like fossils, minerals, religious or historical artefacts, antiquities, stuffed animals or at least parts of them, and lot of other stuff and displayed them in "Cabinets of curiosities/wonders" (from the German term Wunderkammer).

So here I present some curiosities as I found and collected them in my Cabinets of curiosities:

Fig.1. Dragon by U. Aldrovandi, from his opus magnus "Historia serpentum et draconum" (1640).

In the sea of internet a lot of dragons can be found: Dragons by Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) - I mentioned in an earlier post this Renaissance naturali
st and his observations on fossils, however he was also an dedicated biologists, especially ornithologist and ichthyologist, the depictions of the animals are marvellous.

It is often forgotten that becoming a fossil is quite hard, it's an own science called Taphonomy - and the actual Carnal Carnival dealing with this topic is found on
Brian Switeks "Laelaps" post - presenting us to our ultimate fate: "Death and Decay".

But it's also hard to find fossils; Michael D. Barton on his blog "The Dispersal of Darwin" linked to various articles on the first fossil hunters, like the Italian geologist Giambattista Brocchi (1771-1826), the brave and talented Mary Anning (1799 - 1847), who discovered the first recognized sea dragons, the baron of science Cuvier (17
69-1832) and the explorer Humbodt (1769-1859), and Darwin as geologist.

David Orr on "Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs" invite us to visit the dragons of the land as they were displayed in the Crystal Palace in 1854. To celebrate the inauguration of the dinosaur models, Owen organized in December 1853 even a dinner inside one of the models.

Fig.3. The invitation to the dinner held inside Hawkins’s iguanodon reconstruction in December 1853, figure from "A Buried History of Paleontology".

From reports published in the local newspaper and personal anecdotes of some of the participants it's seems that it was a frolicsomely party. The sculptor of the models, Hawkins himself, noted:

"The roaring chorus was so loud and enthusiastic that you could almost believe there roared a herd of Iguanodons."

"The jolly old beast
Is not deceased
There ´s life in him again! [ROAR!]"

Other monsters related to Owens are the terracotta figures of the Natural History Museum of London (Owen was the initiator of the museum), imagined by the artists Waterhouse between 1875-1876, and most of them were realized like the artist want.

Fig.4. Copulating dinosaurs, foto taken by Dinorider d'Andoandor.

Dinorider d'Andoandor posted this reconstruction of dinosaurs doing their best to prevent extinction - the question how dinosaurs copulated, especially species with spines on their back, is intriguing. And speaking of dinosaurs, 100 years ago, famous dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown found an amazing fossil site while drifting down the Red Deer River in Alberta.
And if H.G. Giger would be interested in palaeontology, I’m sure his Parasaurolophus would look a little like this (also note the creationist nightmare – the Precambrian Bunny).
And last but no least the marvellous story about the missing head of the headless chicken.

Searching for old TV-documentaries I rediscovered "Monsters We Met", about the colonization of earth by humans and the consequences for the fauna, the last episode deals with "The End of Eden", New Zealand 800 years ago.
Despite animals found a way in our imagination and religion, in the end we were the monster, we even forced to extinction one of the most strange fauna that ever was - the Megafauna of Australia.

Back to more recent times: History of Psychology remembers the contribution of Lamarck to Zoology and History of Evolution.

"What a pity that I only saw all these wonderful things in a dream, and that I can't actually see them everyday."
"Paris before Man" (1861)