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Animals of the Past

Frederic A. Lucas

Book Overview: 

Prior to the emergence of paleontology and comparative anatomy as scientific disciplines at the end of the 18th century, it was generally known that there were species of animals that had disappeared completely. The term "extinction" originally applied to the extinguishing of fires or erasing of one's debt. It was not until 1784 that the term extinction was used to denote the complete eradication of a species of living being.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Charles Schuchert; and another, part B, Bulletin 39, collecting recent and fossil plants, by F. H. Knowlton.

Fig. 3.—Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly Enlarged.

[18]

II

THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES

"We are the ancients of the earth
And in the morning of the times."

There is a universal, and perfectly natural, desire for information, which in ourselves we term thirst for knowledge and in others call curiosity, that makes mankind desire to know how everything began and causes much speculation as to how it all will end. This may take the form of a wish to know how a millionaire made his first ten cents, or it may lead to the questions—What is the oldest animal? or, What is the first known member of the great group of backboned animals at whose head man has placed himself? and, What did this, our primeval and many-times-removed ancestor, look like? The question is one t. . . Read More