Fossils as 'medals' of Earth's history (Hooke)
Los fósiles como «medallas» de la historia de la Tierra (Hooke)
- Date
- 1668 (publicado 1705) · confidence medium
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Robert Hooke
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
In his lectures at the Royal Society, Hooke argued that fossils are remains of living things and serve, like medals or coins, to reconstruct past changes in climate and geography, and attributed earthquakes to changes in the interior that raise and sink land.
The lectures were read around 1668 and published posthumously in 1705 (Posthumous Works), so their influence came late. Hooke and Steno worked independently.
What it led to
- the idea of using fossils as chronological documents
- a theory of uplift by earthquakes, a precedent for Lyell