George Cuvier Quotes (16 Quotes)

Moreover, it thus follows that not a great deal of time was needed for the large animals of the three major parts of the world to become known to the people who spent time on the coasts of those regions.

The pole of the earth moves in a circle around the pole of the ecliptic its axis inclines more or less on the plane of this same ecliptic.

The traces of upheavals become more impressive when one moves a little higher, when one gets even closer to the foot of the great mountain ranges. There are still plenty of shell layers. We notice them, even thicker and more solid ones.

In my work on Fossil Bones, I set myself the task of identifying the animals whose fossilized remains fill the surface strata of the earth.

The lowest and most level land areas show us, especially when we dig there to very great depths, nothing but horizontal layers of material more or less varied, which almost all contain innumerable products of the sea.

Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a long time they were covered by waters which did not sustain any life.

Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the earth must have had a more decisive effect on the terrestrial quadrupeds than on the marine animals.

The appearance of the bones of quadrupeds, especially those of complete bodies in the strata, tells us either that the layer itself which carries them was in earlier times dry land or that dry land was at least formed in the immediate area.

We know that in the midst of such variations in the nature of the liquid, the animals which it nourished could not have stayed the same.

All solid parts of the earth therefore owe their origin to living things, and without that life the earth would be still entirely liquid.

Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development.

The older the layers, the more each of them is uniform over a great extent; the newer the layers, the more they are limited and subject to variation within small distances.

No doubt, the European traveler does not easily cross the vast extents of territory, deserted or supporting only ferocious peoples.

Thus, life on this earth has often been disturbed by dreadful events. Innumerable living creatures have been victims of these catastrophes.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

But the revolutions and changes which are responsible for the present state of the earth are not limited to the upsetting of the ancient strata and to the ebbing of the sea after the formations of new layers.