Even before Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" book in 1859, the question of whether animals could become a new species was debated hotly in scientific communities.
Questioning Species Transformation
Back in 17988, Napoleon Bonaparte brought some savants on his attempt to take over Egypt, which turned out unsuccessful. A mummified animal collection that scholars retrieved from Egypt seemed to carry the key to questioning the transformation of species.
Two naturalists, Jean-Baptise Lamarck and Georges Cuvier, who were both colleagues at the French Museum of Natural History, represented two sides of the discussion.
In 1832, a mocking eulogy was delivered before the French Academy of Science. Both Cuvier, the writer of the obituary, and Lamarck, the honoree, were dead.
For this specific eulogy case, Cuvier was found to bash the theory of transformism brought about by Lamarck. The latter believed that for long periods, the simplest animal;s turned complex and later transformed into entirely different species. Cuvier found this nonsense as he believed that species could not change.
Both naturalists had argued for the first time thirty years earlier when a mummified ibis reached the museum. This bird could not be distinguished from a modern one, which seemingly proved that Cuvier was correct.
Cuvier mocked the suggestion of Lamarck in his elegy. This was around 60 years before Darwin's theory of natural selection was published.
Lamarck is largely acknowledged for writing about the long necks of giraffes that may have resulted from stretching for leaves and passing the trait down. While the idea was not entirely new, the naturalist had a unique claim that held that such a behavior could gradually result in a new species. He notes that a species was just a temporary category as animals were undergoing constant change.
Cuvier held things differently, believing that species were permanent. However, he could not deny that at certain fossil record intervals, new animal types that never existed before surfaced. Nevertheless, he notes that if Lamarck's suggestion was right, there should have been different in-between fossils that represent the stage halfway between two different species.
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Looking Into Mummified Animals To Verify Evolution
Mummified animals from thousands of years ago appeared to be the ideal entrypoint to examine evidence for changes between animals and their offspring.
Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a naturalist who dissected crocodile, fox, mongoose, and lungfish, was one of the savants of Napoleon. The zoologist was enthusiastic about gathering dead and alive animals. As he was entering ruins, he came across his first mummified animals: ancient birds kept like wine bottles within a cellar.
When Geoffroy went back from Egypt, he brought with him some wrapped cats, ibises, crocodiles, jackals, and other animals. Cuvier was eager to look into these specimens. The process of mummification worked well enough to the point where some tiny hairs appeared to still be intact.
Upon comparing the long-dead ibis bones to modern birds, Cuvier observed that they were quite similar, which Lamarck agreed to. However, these mummies were just 3,000 years old. Back then, nobody knew the age of the planet. Lamarck explained in one lecture that a few thousand years was remarkably small in Earth's grand scheme. He later wrote that it would be unusual to see a new species in a matter of a few millennia.
However, Cuvier felt the vindication of his belief on the unchanging nature of species. He later noted that he had shown how it was at the present exactly how it was during the Pharaohs time, noting that climate and time were not sufficient for altering a species.
Evolutionary Theory by Natural Selection
The mummy evidence was not sufficient to squash the transformism debate despite the powerful reputation of Cuvier. As Charles Darwin published the "On the Origin of Species" book in 1859, the whole discussion ended up flaring once more. By this time, it was supported by the naturalist's extensive research and wide observations.
Roughly two decades following the death of Lamarck, Darwin shared that the naturalist was one his predecessors. The proponent behind the evolutionary theory by natural selection acknowledged that he was not the first to note the modification undergone by species.
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