Jeudi 11 octobre / Thursday 11 October

Prsident de session : Thierry Malvesy

9h-9h20
L'autobiographie de Cuvier
Philippe Taquet, Acadmie des sciences de Paris - France
9h20 - 9h40
Cuvier and his trip to the Swabian Alb
Matthias Geyer, Geotourist Freiburg - Allemagne

9h40 - 10h
Georges Cuvier and establishment of the paleontology as
a science
Felipe Faria,
Federal University of Santa Catarina - Brsil

GEORGES CUVIER AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PALEONTOLOGY AS

A SCIENCE

A presentation in lecture made during the fourth Georges Cuvier Symposium

Montbliard (France), 8 12 October 2012
Fossils, Evolution, Movement
Felipe Faria
Federal University of Santa Catarina - Brazil

The Study of Fossils took centuries until develops methods and research
programs appropriates to present their results, wich serving as inspiration for further
researches, based in a promise of success to explain his object of study. This promise
arose from the ability to solve problems within that defined research field and thus
promoved the adhesion of researchers of that study area to this new set of ideas. Thus
this form to define and solve a problem can be taken from a Kuhnian perspective like a
scientific paradigm.
Thomas Kuhn, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, defended the
occurrence of a Darwinian revolution, which evidently worked in various fields of
Natural History, including the Study of Fossils. Prior to this revolution, Paleontology
had already reached a stage of development where it can be characterized as a period of
normal science, where an established scientific paradigm was receiving recognition for
their achievements, providing model problems and solutions to a community of
practitioners of that science.

PRE-PARADIGMATIC PERIOD

Since its prehistory, humans assigned value to various objects fossilized which
aroused his curiosity and appreciation, probably due to its rarity, its resemblance to
living organisms or parts of them, and its texture and lithologic composition. During the
Ancient Age, many thinkers have raised hypotheses about the origin of fossils, based on
more rational precepts. In this historical period the discussion of organic origin was
present, in other words, some thinkers interpreted fossils as being caused by living
organisms, unlike other thinkers who attributed their origin to magical forces that act
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inside of the earth. This discussion crossed the Middle Ages and lasted until modernity,
where the term fossilia (fossil) was used to denominate all petrified objects obtained
through excavation or that were exposed on the surface of the earth.
The organic origin of fossils received wide acceptance only when the works of
scholars like the Danish physician and anatomist, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686/7) and the
Italian naturalist Fabio Colonna (1567-1650), related marine fossils, found in distant
locations of the coast, to the occurrence of ancient marine transgressions and
regressions. This organic character of the fossils was used by modern thinkers, the
natural theologians diluvialists, as proof of the existence of Biblical Flood traces. The
configuration of the universal distribution of fossils and the localities distant from the
coast, which were often found, attesting to the diluvialists the magnitude of the Deluge.
But they were questioned regarding the layers in which the fossils dug up.
The stratigraphic technique had already established that there was a sequence in the
strata, and that this should be interpreted chronologically. So, to some naturalists, the
fossils that were found in different layers could be treated as originated at different
times, not in a single event, as such claimed the diluvialists.
Thus, even with the acceptance of organic origin, the fossils were still explained
from many points of view, and only described and classified incipiently, configuring,
according to kuhninan scheme, a scientific pre-paradigmatic stage. In this way, is
possible to see, that until this historic moment, there was no realization validated by the
scientific community of that period able to provide some foundation for his later
practice or define problems and methods in this field of knowledge, a situation that
characterizes the emergence of a paradigm, according to Thomas Kuhn.
THE CUVIERS PROJECT

The Montbeliardian Georges Cuvier aimed to understand the nature through the
functional relations, internal and external, to all possible forms of corporal organization,
including the extincts. For him, or better, for his research program for the Natural
History, the kinds of corporal organization should be the criterion for a natural system
of taxonomic classification. In this system the organisms known only through their
fossils was, for the first time, included. But this required that this organisms was
reconstructed. For this, Cuvier needed to develop a method that allowed him to do it.
Comparative Anatomy was this method. Then, Cuvier sought for the principles of this
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method relying on the already know principle, named "Conditions of Existence". The
result was the formulation of the two principles of Comparative Anatomy

Correlations of Parts and Subordination of Characters.

The first principle, set out in his "Lessons of Comparative Anatomy," 1805, and
extended in his Researches on quadrupeds fossil bones, 1812, states that:
"every being organized form a set, an unique closed system, in which all parties would
meet each other and converge to the same final action by a reciprocal reaction."
This character of mutuality implies that a change in one part of the body,
necessarily imply a change in others. And this should occur according to the second
principle , stated in "The animal Kingdom (1817), as follows:
The parts of an animal possess a mutual fitness, there are some traits of them
wich exclude others and there are some wich require others; when we know such
and such traits of an animal we may calculate those wich are coexistent with
them and those wich are incompatible; the parts, properties, or consistent traits
wich have the greatest number of these incompatible or coexistent relations with
the others, or in other words, wich exercise the most marked influence on the
creature, we call dominant characters; the others are the subordinate characters,
and there are thus different degrees of them.

Based on these principles and using the enormous collection of the Museum of
Natural History in Paris, his workplace, Cuvier undertook a multitude of paleontological
reconstructions that allowed him develop his research program for the Natural History.
In this trajectory, he gave to a knowledge area of Natural History, the study of fossils,
the conditions to become a autonomous scientific discipline. Thereafter this study
would became Paleontology.
Occuping the Museum chair of Animal Anatomy, and making strong use of his
Anatomy comparative methods, Cuvier made important paleontological reconstructions
that allowed the identification of new fossil species, such as the

Mammouth,

Megatherium, the Anoplotherium, the Paleotherium (extinct animals of the Cenozoic

Mega-fauna), and still did some corrections of reconstructions made by other fossil
scholars, like that the mosasaurus, the pterodactylus and the giant salamander (Hommo
Diluvii Testis), extinct animals, which had been mistakenly reconstructed, identified
and classified by eminent naturalists.

But perhaps, the most known of them was the legendary prediction episode in
the identification of the opossum fossil of Montmartre (Sedimentary Basin, located on
the outskirts of Paris), which, at first glance, had no visible taxonomic diagnostic
characters. In this episode, Cuvier, in the presence of the various naturalists,
surprisingly predicted that that fossil was the rests of an opossum, a marsupial animal
restricted to the New World and Australia. For this, he based on the analysis of the
visible teeth, in wich he applied the principles and methods of the Comparative
Anatomy. In the sequence, he excavated the fossil matrix and then the taxonomic
diagnostic characters came to the light, proving his prediction.
These and other famous works earned him an excellent acceptance of his
methods by the scientific community, which he endeavored to form.
In the year of 1800, Cuvier made a broad appeal for international scientific
collaboration, in a work on fossil quadrupeds. Supported by the Napoleonic policy of
appeasement, which began to increase, he clamed to naturalists throughout the world to
send him material to study, pledging to provide back the results of these studies and the
recognition of the discovery priority. In his own words: "This mutual exchange of
information is perhaps the most noble and interesting trade that man can accomplish."
So here is another Kuhnian factor: the formation of a scientific community that would
make appear in his works, their realizations within, in this case, the scientific field of
the Paleontology.

SOME PROBLEMS OR KUHNIAN ANOMALIES

In 1796, early in his career, Cuvier presented a study about Elephant species,
living and fossils, where he convincingly, for the first time, demonstrated the
occurrence of the natural phenomenon of extinction. In this work, in which he had as
object of study fossils of mammoths, he did not merely describe them, but compared
them with living elephants, aiming to establish their taxonomic positions. Through
comparative anatomy method, he could conclude that the living elephants and
mammoths belonged to different species.
But the extinction raised a question: what would be the process, or processes,
responsible for this phenomenon. The answer to this question was obtained by invoking
his "Theory of Revolutions", or "Catastrophism". According to this theory, the Earth's
surface had been subjected, in certain places and times, to the various geological
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phenomena, mainly floods, destroying many species. These events, which he called
"revolutions", occurred suddenly, alternated with periods of relative geological calm.
The species of locations not affected, subsequently occupied the locations affected to
such "revolutions", through the migration process. Thus, the world of living beings, in a
remote past, was a world full of species, and for have been subjected to many disasters,
this situation has changed.
With his studies on fossils of Montmartre, Cuvier noted that that location had
been subjected to many "revolutions", and this could be seen too, through the analysis
of their strata. The different lithological compositions of the strata and the fossils,
should be caused by various "revolutions", such as marine transgressions and
regressions, combined with fluvial flood. And the catastrophic nature of these events
could be observed with the presence of species that became extinct in such event. But it
also drew attention to the fact that certain fossil groups appeared only in specifics strata.
Therefore, around 1803, Cuvier began a study in collaboration with the French
mineralogist, Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) which culminated in the formulation
of the principle of "biostratigraphic correlation. This principle states that certain strata
can be recognized by its fossil content. With this assumption could be established
correspondences between distant and non-continuous layers, and with different
lithologies, as long as, the fossil contain could be correlated. This allowed to
Stratigraphy to extend their studies to large areas, enabling the production of wideranging stratigraphic maps, resulting in a better understanding of the geological
formations of the globe.
Another consequence of this work was the perception that certain groups,
according to their distribution in the strata, appeared in the fossil record, remained for a
period of time and then were replaced by other groups. This phenomenon of "Biotic
Succession" was based on the strata chronology established by the acceptance of the
Steno works, and it happened after each extinctive event, in other words, after each
revolution or catastrophe.
But with the advance of the paleontological and stratigraphical studies, occured
the perception of an increasing number of extinctive and successional events, all
registered in the geological strata. This made more difficult the explanation by the
cuvierian theory of Revolutions, because, it was difficult to imagine a primordial stock
of species that had been so big to be submitted to successive reductions and yet present
the amount and diversity seen nowadays in the nature.
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This theoric anomaly was, in a first moment, solved by some cuvierians by an

articulation of the theory of revolutions, wherein, after each extinctive event, occurred
an subsequent event of Creation of species. But, again, with the continuous advance of
the studies, more and more events of extinction and succession was observed by the
analysis of the geological strata, that made almost impossible to accept a large number
of revolutions and creations of species.
This situation opened a great room for a kind of explanation to biotic succession,
based in the idea that successor species, rather than being created after each extinctive
event, transformed themselves into another, with the passing of the time. It was the
Transformism, wich later, with some articulations, received the name of Evolutionism,
mainly when Charles Darwinworks was accept.
Therefore, it seems very appropriate not only to put Cuvier as establisher of the
first scientific paradigm installed in Paleontology, but also align him in a tradition of
studies that led to what Ernst Mayr termed, Evolutionary Biology. Even after the
establishment of the evolutionism like a new paradigm of the Natural History, the
paleontologists under the guidance of cuvierian anatomical, physiological and
stratigraphic methods, produced data that could be used by evolutionists. His and their
contribution to the Natural History tradition that became in Evolutionary Biology must
be defended, despite the apparent paradox. The fixist Cuvier developed several
epistemological conditions that made room for the installation of a Kuhnian revolution
in Natural History. Even having strained to change this Natural History, that was
intensely driven by the ideas of Cuvier, the evolutionists could count with the
contribution of knowledge that cuvierian Paleontology produced. Darwin did so.