Lecture 1 Flashcards
Who is Linnaeus?
He was called Carl Von Linne but wrote under the Latin name Linnaeus and he was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.
When was Linnaeus around?
Circa 1735
What was Linnaeus’s system called?
Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae
What did Systema Naturae do?
It charted life by dividing it into kingdoms, classes, orders, genera and species.
What did Linnaeus attempt to do?
He attempted to classify all life on Earth
When was Systema Naturae first published?
When Linnaeus was in his late twenties but he continued to refine the details throughout his life.
What is each specie in System Naturae?
Each species is a distinct archetype and a reflection of God’s intent.
What is Comte de Buffon’s full name?
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Was Comte de Buffon successful?
He was one of the most respected naturalists of his era.
What did Comte de Buffon publish?
Natural History
What speculation did Comte de Buffon make in Natural History?
That living creatures evolve according to natural laws.
What did Comte de Buffon dare to suggest?
That apes and apes and humans are related, and that all life has descended from a single ancestor.
Did De Buffon stand by what he said?
No, he recanted his findings under pressure saying ‘I abandon everything in my book…contrary to the narrative of Moses’.
When was Comte de Buffon around?
Circa 1749
What was Lamarck’s full name?
Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and he was French
When was Lamarck around?
1809
What did Lamarck do with evolution?
He championed evolution
What did Lamarck propose?
That living things evolve to become more complex through time.
What was Lamarck’s philosophie called?
Zoologique
What did Lamarck claim in Zoologique?
That ‘vital forces’ within creatures help them to adapt to their environments.
How do acquired traits develop?
Through use or disuse
What happens to acquired traits?
They are passed on to future generations
What does Lamarck think happened to wading birds?
He thinks that they evolved long legs as they stretched to keep high and dry.
Was Lamarck successful?
He is the most renowned, but not the only, proponent of evolution of this era.
When was Cuvier around?
1817
What did Cuvier see?
He saw catastrophes in fossil records
How did Cuvier see these catastrophes?
When the construction of canals and mines in the early 19th century happened, they unearthed fossils or bizarre and extinct creatures.
Where did Cuvier work?
He worked in the French national museum in Paris
What did Cuvier study?
He studied wooly mammoths and mastodons
What did Cuvier’s study show?
That these elephant like animals are not members of the modern elephant species and therefore represent earlier elephant relatives that no longer exist. Therefore he showed that species can go extinct and that extinction is a real biological phenomenon.
What did Cuvier’s results allow to be completed?
They allowed the conceptual framework to be completed which was needed to understand dinosaurs as extinct fossil animals.