I have no idea how the sea could reach so far into the land; I do not know whether this happened during the universal Deluge or during other special floods. . . . I do not know, neither do I know the way to find out. Nor do I care. What I do know is that the corals, the shells, the sharks' teeth, the dogfish teeth, the echinoids, etc., are real corals, real shells, real teeth; shells and bones that have indeed been petrified.
These words, written by Agostino Scilla in his 1670 book Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense stood in defiance of the conclusions of the very influential Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who believed that some fossils were formed as sports of nature. Scilla also uncovered the origin of glossopetrae, as did Niels Stensen a few years earlier. (Scilla was apparently unaware of Stensen's earlier work, an easy mistake before the invention of the Internet or even the telegraph!)
Scilla was born in 1629, in Messina, Sicily. His participation in a failed revolt against Spanish rule forced him into exile, so he wound up living in Turin and then Rome, where he had earlier received an education. Besides an astute interest in fossils, Scilla possessed considerable artistic talent, so much so that Charles Lyell praised his work more than a century after Scilla's death.
That he rejected Kircher's notions of fossils as nature's big joke didn't mean that Scilla necessarily had a modern understanding of geology. Scilla believed that fossils were probably deposited by the Noachian flood, though he suggested there might have been a series of floods. This suspicion was far from the findings of today's science, but the notion of a series of events brought Scilla closer than his contemporaries to understanding how fossils were formed deposited in rocks.
On the cover of Scilla's book, Sense holds a fossil shell and gestures toward an outcrop of similar organisms to make the point. The fact that the fossils include a shark tooth and echinoid — easily recognizable fossils if well preserved — helps Sense's case. At that time, a few other sharp minds, including those of Stensen, John Ray and Robert Hooke, reached similar conclusions about the organic nature of fossils.
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Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated September 13, 2009