Strange Science: Earth Sciences

Cartoon Geology and paleontology have a lot in common: they complement each other, they concern themselves with vast expanses of time, and they're both relatively new disciplines. Geology not only helps us study the history of life on earth, it enables us to comprehend events beyond our control, like the earthquake that devastated California in 1906, the same year that this cartoon was published. Oddly enough, continental drift, the mechanism causing earthquakes and volcanoes, was not widely understood until the 1960s, even though Alfred Wegener described the process in 1912.


		Now appears in: Rocks and Fossils by Busbey, Coenraads, Willis and Roots Ever seen an ancient Chinese seismometer? That's what this is. Each tremor causes a ball to drop from the griffin's mouth into the frog's. Not exactly the accuracy of the USGS, but not a bad idea, either. Frequent, deadly earthquakes caused the Chinese to try detecting seismic activity starting in the second century AD.

		Century: 16th Scientist/artist: Marcantonio Raimondi Name: Witches' Sabbath with Reconstructed Skeleton of Monster Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy Europeans frequently portrayed fossilized creatures as instruments of the devil, along with goats, potions and witches. Fossils were said to have been "begotten by Satan to vie with God," a charge some biblical literalists still level today.

		Year: 1485 Scientist: Barthélemy de Glanville Originally published in: Le Livre des Propriétés des Choses Now appears in: The Discovery of the Past by Alain Schnapp An old saying in academic circles is: "Language affects perception." A good example is how differently the term "fossil" has been defined. Today, a fossil is defined as any evidence of ancient life, but centuries ago, a fossil was anything dug out of the ground, and that could be a crystal or a human artifact. No wonder scholars took so long to figure out what fossils really were. Evidence of this old confusion appears in this 15th-century woodcut. This prolific hillside gives rise both to vases and animals, all of them emerging from gaps in the ground. Larger image available

		Year: 1708 Scientist: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer Originally published in: Bildnissen verschiedener Fischen und dero Theilen, welche in der Sündfluth zu Grund gegangen Now appears in: Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary This engraving of a fossil fish was beautifully detailed and probably accurate. What missed the mark was Scheuchzer's characterization of this and other fish fossils as "The Different Fish that Died in the Great Flood." Expanded image available

		Year: 1664-1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World by Joscelyn Godwin German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher was a polymath who studied everything from magnetism to comparative religion. At a time when boundaries had not yet been drawn between science, religion and art, Kircher mingled these things to spectacular (if not entirely accurate) effect. During the 1660s and 1670s, he published two volumes of Mundus Subterraneus (The Subterranean World). The volumes covered gravity, the sun and moon, eclipses, volcanoes, ocean currents, weather, minerals, fossils, astrology, dragons, demons, alchemy, spontaneous generation and fireworks, among other topics. To explain the uncanny resemblances these stony images bore to birds, Kircher suggested a few possibilities, including chance, petrifaction, and divine disposition enacted by angelic and/or natural forces. Expanded image available

		Year: 1664-1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher by Joscelyn Godwin, Rocks and Fossils by Busbey, Coenraads, Willis and Roots and A Source Book in Geology edited by Mather and Mason The top image, shows Kircher's hypothesis that wind forces ocean water into underground reservoirs, from which it emerges through springs, rivers and lakes. Convinced that mountains gave rise to rivers, Kircher looked for the seminal mountains on each continent. The bottom image shows the earth's fiery core (which is also shown in the top image) feeding smaller fires that eventually emerge as volcanoes.

		Year: 1664-1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Possessing Nature by Paula Findlen Though a little fanciful, this illustration of Mount Etna was far less speculative than Kircher's pictures on the earth's core. It was based on his own visit to the smoking volcano in 1637. The Jesuit visited Vesuvius, too, and wrote, "When I finally reached the crater, it was terrible to behold. The whole area was lit up by fires, and the glowing sulphur and bitumen produced an intolerable vapor. It was just like hell, only lacking the demons to complete the picture." Larger image available

		Year: 1776 Originally published in: De Anima Brutorum Commentaria Now appears in: "In Retrospect: The Earliest Picture of Evolution?" by Fausto Barbagli in Nature, November 19, 2009 issue Although many artists and scientists made mistakes, now preserved for posterity, plenty of other practitioners touched upon accurate ideas ahead of their time. Traditional wisdom maintains that the concept of evolution wasn't depicted prior to Lamarck's tree diagrams at the turn of the 19th century. But in the late 18th century, a Carmelite monk named Francesco Maria Soldini penned a book examining whether animals have souls. The Florentine publishers apparently decided to decorate the book with engravings bearing little relation to the text. The artists behind the engravings remain unknown, but this image apparently pictures animals moving from the sea to land. Perhaps inspired by the Neptunian notions popular at the time, the pictures could show early depictions of biological evolution, decades before Charles Darwin posed a workable theory

		Year: 1774 Scientist/artist: J.S. Schroeter Now appears in: Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey Trilobites were ancient marine arthropods that went extinct before the first dinosaurs evolved. Trilobite fossils have been found in abundance, but the fossils usually consist only of the shells covering the tops of their bodies. This rather froggy looking trilobite depiction includes purely speculative legs — as well as an extra head.

		Year: 1857 Scientist/artist: Philip Henry Gosse Originally published in: Omphalos Now appears in: Glimpses of the Wonderful by Ann Thwaite Compared to the previous example, there's nothing wrong with this depiction of trilobites. The 19th-century text surrounding this picture, however, was pretty weird. A devout Christian, Gosse struggled to reconcile his literal belief in the Bible with mounting evidence that, compared to humans, the earth was ancient. His solution was to coin the term Prochronism, which says life goes in a circle, and to create the earth and its inhabitants at any time, God apparently had little choice but to create "evidence" of an earlier existence. Such evidence included fossils like trilobites and even Adam's belly button. The title of the book, in fact, was Greek for "navel." Scientists ignored Gosse's hypothesis (with good reason as they had no way to test it). And although Gosse insisted God wasn't playing any tricks, many Christians thought that was the only logical conclusion they could take from his work, and they largely rejected it, too. Still, the argument that God uses fossils just to test believers' faith surfaces even today.

		Year: 1565 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Omni Rerum Fossilium Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams Did you know rocks could have babies? Well maybe not, but that's just what a lot of people used to think. When some rocks were broken, they revealed smaller rocks inside, and some rocks were even rumored to spontaneously burst open, giving birth to little rocks. Where did people get these ideas? From rocks that are now called concretions. When layers of sediment cover an object and immediately harden, they form a tough nodule. (This often happens to fossils, and preserves them very well.) Sometimes, the inner layers of sediment in a concretion erode away, leaving the small core rattling around inside a tough outer layer. When the outer layer is broken open, it looks like the rock had a baby.

		Year: 1648 Scientist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: Musaeum Metallicum Now appears in: "Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605): The Study of Trace Fossils During the Renaissance" by Andrea Baucon in Ichnos, October 2009 issue Renaissance naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi took the concept of rocks ready to give birth even further than Gesner. This image depicts a "rock pregnant with a shell." Given the limited understanding of fossilization at the time, his suspicions were understandable. To his credit, Aldrovandi did discuss petrifaction when describing a mammoth tooth.

		Year: 1565 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Omni Rerum Fossilium Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams In his book on fossils, Gesner outlined 15 different categories of fossils, everything from objects taking their names from heavenly bodies to objects resembling four-footed animals. In this illustration, the fossils on top looked to Gesner like serpent eggs, while the ones on the bottom resembled stars. In fact, both kinds were fossil echinoderms: marine invertebrates whose bodies are based on a five-sided plan. Although echinoderms have existed for hundreds of millions of years, many species still live today, but Gesner probably never saw any in their native habitats.

		Year: 1598 Scientist/artist: Jean Bauhin Originally published in: Treatise on German fountains at Boll Now appears in: I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould Today a fossil is identified as any evidence of ancient life. Centuries ago, fossils were identified as anything dug up from the ground, and savants frequently lumped items of organic and inorganic origins together. Here, Bauhin depicted a snail shell and a crystal together because they had the same general shape. Savants often looked for objects resembling body parts, hoping those "fossils" could cure the ailing organs.

		Year: 1708 Scientist: Carolus Nicolaus Langius Originally published in: Historia Lapidum Figuratorum Helvetiae Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams What 18th-century scholars regarded as "figured stones" are today recognized as fossils. The circular and star-shaped objects at the top appear to come from crinoid (sea lily) stems. The figure near the bottom of the frame is probably a trilobite fossil. Larger image available

		Year: 1598 Scientist/artist: Jean Bauhin Originally published in: Treatise on German fountains at Boll Now appears in: I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould In another example of the confusion over the organic versus inorganic origin of fossils, Bauhin drew what looked like stalactites dangling from the ceiling of a cave. In fact, these fossils belonged to belemnites — shells of squidlike animals.

		Year: 1497 Originally published in: Hortus Sanitatis Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams Even in the age of Pliny, savants recognized that some stones could attract iron, and further that some of these stones were bipolar, attracting iron on one side and repelling it on the other. Still, the power of these magnets (or lodestones, as they were called) was a tad overrated. Legends told of lodestone hills along the Indian coast so powerful that no ship held together by iron nails dared sail past. This picture shows the resulting tragedy as the nails fly to the hills and the passengers sink into the water.

		Now appears in: Rocks and Fossils by Busbey, Coenraads, Willis and Roots A commonly held belief during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was that lead could be turned to gold, as in this wishful depiction. Anti-alchemy laws forbidding transmutation of lesser metals into gold were not uncommon — not because the lawmakers thought transmutation would fail, but precisely because they thought it might succeed and undermine the economy. In his plan for the ideal alchemical factory, 17th-century polymath Johann Joachim Becher neatly divided up the tasks that different workers would do. Becher insisted that the laborers be illiterate, or at least denied access to pens and paper, and that laborers from different parts of the factory be forbidden to fraternize with each other and trade secrets. (In fact, 20th-century science does enable us to change lead to gold, but the energy requirements are so costly, it's easier to find gold the old-fashioned way.) Regardless of how alchemical gold might have changed commerce, debates raged about its usefulness in medicine; centuries ago, some people actually ingested gold in hopes of strengthening their hearts, but no one knew whether "alchemical" gold could have the same effect.

		Year: 1637 Scientist/artist: Francesco Stelluti Originally published in: Trattato del Legno Fossile Minerale Now appears in: Fossil Woods and Other Geological Specimens by Andrew C. Scott and David Freedberg "From what I have been able to see and observe, the wood is not generated from the seed or root of any plant whatsoever, but only from a type of earth, containing much clay, which is slowly transformed into wood," Stelluti wrote. Stelluti was wrong, and for members of the meticulous Lincean Academy, such errors were rare. The mistake is forgivable, though, considering the fossil wood in question had no fossil leaves attached, and had been carried far away from its original locality.

		Year: 1676 Scientist/artist: Robert Plot Originally published in: The Natural History of Oxfordshire Now appears in: The Dinosaur Papers edited by Weishampel and White According to Robert Plot, every stone was designed by God for the edification or entertainment of humans, including this rock that looked like a funny face. Plot described this rock among other stones that looked like human eyes, human ears and human hearts.

		Year: 1497 Originally published in: Hortus Sanitatis Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams Just as humans can form "stones" in our gallbladders or kidneys, so can other animals. That much, medieval and Renaissance Europeans understood, though they seemed to think some stones came from different parts animals' bodies, such as the head of a frog. Here, a man extracts stones, called a bufonites, from the head of a frog who seems pretty good-natured about the whole process. Although you and I probably wouldn't want to handle these stony secretions (often called bezoar stones), they were once highly valued, some selling for 10 times their own weight in gold. Why? They were thought to be an antidote to all kinds of poison. In an age when the ranks of royalty were often dispatched with poison — sometimes by their own family members — antidotes were hot items.

		Year: 1565 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Omni Rerum Fossilium Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams For many years, Europeans had been finding weird stones, often pointy, often with holes in them. Today, these stones are understood to be ancient artifacts, namely axes with holes drilled in them for handles. Centuries ago, they were thought to be created by lightning strikes. These thunderstones were carried around or kept in houses to ward off damage from electrical storms.

		Year: 1749 Scientist: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Originally published in: Protogaea Now appears in: Protogaea by Leibniz Belemnites are the internal skeletons of extinct cephalopods, and these fossils flummoxed naturalists for centuries. To his credit, Leibniz argued that these strange stones were likely leftovers from once-living animals, though he wasn't sure which ones. He referred to them as "Fingers of Ida." Leibniz had more confidence in identifying fossil shark teeth, having been influenced by the polymath Steno. Although Leibniz scoffed at some contemporary notions about the curative abilities of shark teeth, he did advocate their use in cleaning human teeth.

		Year: 1618 Scientist/artist: Johannes Kepler Originally published in: Epitome of Copernican Astronomy Now appears in: "Global Visions and the Establishment of Theories of the Earth" by Kerry Magruder in Centaurus, October 2006 issue Although best known for his work in astronomy, Kepler also gave serious thought to the composition of the earth. He explained that the earth's axis was inclined thanks to magnetic fibers running parallel to it. He also compared the earth's daily motion to the spinning of a top. What perhaps seems stranger to the modern mind would be Kepler's conviction that the earth had a soul that both animated geological processes and responded to the positions of other planets.

		Year: 1680-1689 Scientist/artist: Thomas Burnet Originally published in: Sacred Theory of the Earth Now appears in: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle by Stephen Jay Gould Most people today think of mountains as pretty if not beautiful, but Thomas Burnet argued that they were ugly — remnants of the humanity-punishing biblical flood. People didn't always listen to Burnet as they should have, so he emphasized his point with global maps showing asymmetrical mountain ranges. Before the Deluge, he was sure, the earth had been a perfect, aesthetically pleasing orb. Larger image available

		Year: 1557 Scientist/artist: Christopher Encelius Originally published in: De re Metallica Now appears in: "Both Neonate and Elder: The First Fossil of 1557" by Stephen Jay Gould in Paleobiology, March 2002 issue This little woodcut of a fossil mollusk wasn't a bad rendition, but Encelius gave it a puzzling classification. He claimed to have found an object described centuries earlier by Pliny the Elder: Chelonitis. Pliny described this object simply as "like a tortoise." How Encelius arrived at a tortoise interpretation of this shell is a mystery, but by including a picture of it — perhaps the first ever published picture of a fossil invertebrate — helped subsequent scholars identify it correctly. Conrad Gesner did just that not long afterwards.

		Year: 1644 Scientist/artist: René Descartes Originally published in: Principia Philosophiae Now appears in: "Global Visions and the Establishment of Theories of the Earth" by Kerry Magruder in Centaurus, October 2006 issue During Descartes's day, Europeans struggled to understand how the earth had developed mountains and sea beds. He proposed that, over time, the "outer shell" of an initially soggy earth had dried out, and the crust had collapsed in places. The idea influenced the work of Niels Stensen (Steno), who relied on the phenomenon to explain parts of earth's geology. Crustal collapse turned out to be wrong, but that didn't keep Steno from laying important foundations of modern geology, and it's not hard to see how crustal collapse would have provided a plausible explanation for many of earth's features.

		Year: c. 1356 Scientist: Sir John Mandeville Originally published in: Travels Now appears in: The Book of Fabulous Beasts by Joseph Nigg Described a millennium earlier by Herodotus, gold-digging ants of exotic India made an appearance in Mandeville's account. Said to be the size of dogs, the ferocious ants could only be parted from their gold by exceptional guile. Here, several ants swarm a horse.

		Year: 1599 Scientist: Giovanni Battista Nazari Originally published in: Della Tramutatione Metallica Sogni Tre Now appears in: Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy in Art by Matilde Battistini, translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia In producing this image, Nazari wasn't claiming that a creature like this really existed. But this "Philosophers' Mercury" image was intended to symbolize the near-magical metal. The way this three-headed, four-faced animal bit its own tail alluded to quicksilver's dual nature, both solid and volatile.