Lezing Jelle Reumer

The grand story of thinking about fossils Fossils have been found and studied for centuries, but for a long time it remained unknown what fossils were. Thinking about them went through a number of important paradigm shifts. Over the course of three centuries, the image tilted; from spontaneous formations of nature, fossils first became remnants of the biblical flood and then remnants of extinct life. As the number of discoveries increased, knowledge increased. God disappeared as an explanatory force, the flood was no longer used to understand how fossil seashells occurred far inland and eventually fossils illustrated the evolution of life on earth, including that of man himself. Professor Beringer's fake fossils, Johann Scheuchzer's Flood Man, the first Mosasaurus from Maastricht, the extinct marine reptiles that Mary Anning found along the English south coast, the mammoths that made George Cuvier think that species can become extinct, an aurochs that was found along the Eem and Eugène Dubois' Java Man: they all play a role in the grand story of thinking about fossils. And they are all discussed in detail in this book. In Teylers Museum in Haarlem, a museum that is almost a fossil itself, many of these old remains can still be admired.