Editing Fossil (section)

=== Early modern explanations ===
[[File:Anoplotherium 1812 Skeleton Sketch.jpg|thumb|Georges Cuvier's 1812 skeletal reconstruction of ''[[Anoplotherium]] commune'' based on fossil remains of the extinct [[artiodactyl]] from [[Montmartre]] in Paris, France]]
More scientific views of fossils emerged during the [[Renaissance]]. [[Leonardo da Vinci]] concurred with Aristotle's view that fossils were the remains of ancient life.<ref>{{ cite journal
| title= Leonardo da Vinci, the founding father of ichnoogy
| first = Andrea | last = Baucon
| journal = PALAIOS
| volume = 25 | number= 5/6 
| date = 2010
| pages = 361–367
| publisher = SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
| doi = 10.2110/palo.2009.p09-049r | jstor=40606506
| bibcode = 2010Palai..25..361B | s2cid = 86011122 }}</ref>{{rp|361}} For example, Leonardo noticed discrepancies with the biblical flood narrative as an explanation for fossil origins:

{{blockquote|If the Deluge had carried the shells for distances of three and four hundred miles from the sea it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects all heaped up together; but even at such distances from the sea we see the oysters all together and also the shellfish and the cuttlefish and all the other shells which congregate together, found all together dead; and the solitary shells are found apart from one another as we see them every day on the sea-shores.}}

{{blockquote|And we find oysters together in very large families, among which some may be seen with their shells still joined together, indicating that they were left there by the sea and that they were still living when the strait of Gibraltar was cut through. In the mountains of Parma and Piacenza multitudes of shells and corals with holes may be seen still sticking to the rocks....<ref>{{cite book | last =da Vinci | first =Leonardo | author-link =Leonardo da Vinci | title =The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci | publisher =Reynal & Hitchcock | date =1956 | orig-year =1938 | location =London | page =335 | url ={{google books |plainurl=y |id=qMoQAAAAIAAJ|page335}} | isbn =978-0-9737837-3-5 }}{{Dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>}}

[[File:Rozprawa o přewratech kůry zemnj, Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|''[[Ichthyosaurus]]'' and ''[[Plesiosaurus]]'' from the 1834 Czech edition of [[Georges Cuvier|Cuvier]]'s ''Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe'']]
In 1666, [[Nicholas Steno]] examined a shark, and made the association of its teeth with the "tongue stones" of ancient Greco-Roman mythology, concluding that those were not in fact the tongues of venomous snakes, but the teeth of some long-extinct species of shark.<ref name=sharkteeth />

[[Robert Hooke]] (1635–1703) included [[micrograph]]s of fossils in his ''[[Micrographia]]'' and was among the first to observe fossil [[foram]]s. His observations on fossils, which he stated to be the petrified remains of creatures some of which no longer existed, were published posthumously in 1705.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/july-2-1635-robert-hooke-the-last-virtuoso-of-silly-science/ |title=July 18, 1635: Robert Hooke – The Last Virtuoso of Silly Science |last=Bressan |first=David |work=Scientific American Blog Network |access-date=11 February 2018 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180212142108/https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/july-2-1635-robert-hooke-the-last-virtuoso-of-silly-science/ |archive-date=12 February 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[William Smith (geologist)|William Smith (1769–1839)]], an English canal engineer, observed that rocks of different ages (based on the [[law of superposition]]) preserved different assemblages of fossils, and that these assemblages succeeded one another in a regular and determinable order. He observed that rocks from distant locations could be correlated based on the fossils they contained. He termed this the principle of ''faunal succession''. This principle became one of Darwin's chief pieces of evidence that biological evolution was real.

[[Georges Cuvier]] came to believe that most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of extinct species. This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called [[catastrophism]]. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants he said:

{{blockquote|All of these facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem to me to prove the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/History/cuvier.xhtml|title=Cuvier|website=palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk|access-date=3 November 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525001629/http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/palaeofiles/history/cuvier.xhtml|archive-date=25 May 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>}}

Interest in fossils, and geology more generally, expanded during the early nineteenth century.  In Britain, [[Mary Anning]]'s discoveries of fossils, including the first complete [[ichthyosaur]] and a complete [[plesiosaurus]] skeleton, sparked both public and scholarly interest.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mary Anning |url=http://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/collection/mary-anning/ |website=Lyme Regis Museum |access-date=21 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180822051829/http://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/collection/mary-anning/ |archive-date=22 August 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref>