Marine fossils and a vanished sea (Xenophanes)
Fósiles marinos y mar desaparecido (Jenófanes)
- Date
- c. 500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Syracuse, Sicily, Italy
- Credited to
- Xenophanes of Colophon
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
According to later doxographers, Xenophanes read the shells found inland and the impressions of fish and seaweed in the quarries of Syracuse and Paros as proof that the sea had once covered those lands. It is one of the earliest readings of fossils as the remains of living things.
We know his observations only from Hippolytus of Rome (3rd century), who summarised them centuries later; the exact place where he saw them is uncertain.
What it led to
- the idea of cycles of land and sea in Ionian philosophy and in Herodotus
- the basis of the Greek tradition that recognised the organic origin of fossils