David Barrington’s Lectures in Biology 2, 2004

The Biology of Plants: evolution, function, and ecology

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The pigeon and the knotweed.

Goethe’s inspiration - the European Fan Palm at the Padua Botanical Garden

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749 - 1832

Padua Botanical Garden

SERIAL HOMOLOGY - GOETHE’S PALM AND A LOBSTER

Growth is distal, animal or plant…

SEA CLIFF WITH STRATA AT JOGGINS, NOVA SCOTIA

SCALE TREE TRUNK FOSSILIN PLACE IN THE STRATA AT JOGGINS, NOVA SCOTIA

DIAMETER OF TRUNK: 60 cm

COAL MEASURE SEQUENCE AT POINT ACONI,CAPE BRETON ISLAND.

COAL

SHALE (MUD STONE) with scattered leaf fossils

SHALE with rootbearing Fossils in place

SURFACE OF SCALE TREE STEM WITH DIAMOND-SHAPED LEAF SCARS

Leaf, Stem, and Cone Fossils of the Scaletrees

One inch

Rootbearing Fossil of the Scaletrees

One inch

WILLIAM SMITH (1769-1839)

and his map.

William Smith’s map - inferring a vertical sequence upward from older to younger rocks.

Jurassic beds near Lyme Regis on the south coast of Dorset, England, and ammonites from one of the beds. While studying these beds and others about 1800, William Smith developed the concept of "guide fossils."

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) early recognized the phenomena of restriction of distinctive fossils to particular zones, formations or series — guide fossils — and applied this tool in their stratigraphical studies. Moreover, they observed a pattern or trend in the change from level to level. Of the shells found in the upper, more recent levels, he states that the "eye of the most expert naturalist cannot distinguish from those which at present inhabit the ocean." Forms of life recovered from successively more ancient strata were observed to become progressively more strange and "peculiar" (Cuvier 1817:13, 108-109).

Fig. 25.2, p. 468