November 12, 2014 - 14:40
This chapter mainly focused on the naturalist Curvier, telling the story of Curvier conceiving a whole new concept of extinction based on the finding of a few bones, the Mastodon’s Molar. At that time, most scientists agreed with the idea of evolution and they believed that the reason why animals today are different from the ancient times are that animals evolved by the time into how they look today. However, after the discovery of the mastodon’s teeth, Curvier insist on his idea that there once existed a whole extinct world and tried to prove his view by studying the bones of different extinct animals.
In this chapter, the author wrote about how the concept of extinction was first brought out in the past. The story of Curvier shows how people driven by curiosity could make huge progress in discovering the world and nature.