17th century in paleontology

none This article records significant discoveries and events related to paleontology that occurred or were published in the 17th century. 1665 Athanasius Kircher in Mundus Subterraneus (publication of which begins in Amsterdam) describes giant bones as those belonging to extinct races of humans.Palmer Douglas 2005 Earth Time: exploring the deep past from Victorian England to the Grand Canyon Wiley Chichester 978-0-470-02221-4 1671 Martin Lister, a member of London's Royal Society declares that despite their appearances, fossils were never part of any animals. 1677 Robert Plot misinterprets a piece of Megalosaurus thigh bone as belonging to a war elephant brought to Britain when the region was under the control of the Roman Empire.Robert Plot: A brief biography of this important geologists life and work Oxford University Museum of Natural History 4 http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/plot.pdf 14 June 2013 1 October 2006 https://web.archive.org/web/20061001094736/http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/plot.pdf dead Despite recognizing this find as a petrified bone, he would later make the curious claim that fossils were made by God to decorate the inside of the Earth, and were thus never part of real animals. Farlow James O. M. K. Brett-Surmann The Complete Dinosaur Indiana University Press 1999 Bloomington, Indiana 5 0-253-21313-4 1696 Robert Plot, the first illustrator of a dinosaur bone, dies in Borden, Kent, the village where he was born. 1699 Edward Lhuyd, a Welsh naturalist, speculates that fossils form when the minute spawn of oceanic life is carried inland by air currents and is forced to germinate inside of rocks. He also names Rutellum, a specimen now recognized as a Cetiosaurid Sauropod Dinosaur. References Category:Paleontology by year Paleontology