gradual processes operating over countless millennia—processes like
sedimentation, erosion, and vulcanism, which were all still readily
observable. For generations of geology students, Lyell’s thesis would be
summed up as “The present is the key to the past.”
As far as extinction was concerned, this, too, according to Lyell,
occurred at a very slow pace—so slow that, at any given time, in any given
place, it would not be surprising were it to go unnoticed. The fossil
evidence, which seemed to suggest that species had at various points died
out en masse, was a sign that the record was unreliable. Even the idea that
the history of life had a direction to it—first reptiles, then mammals—was
mistaken, another faulty inference drawn from inadequate data. All
manner of organisms had existed in all eras, and those that had
apparently vanished for good could, under the right circumstances, pop
up again. Thus “the huge iguanodon might reappear in the woods, and
the ichthyosaur in the sea, while the pterodactyle might flit again
through umbrageous groves of tree-ferns.” It is clear, Lyell wrote, “that
there is no foundation in geological facts for the popular theory of the
successive development of the animal and vegetable world.”
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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