At the sight of a single bone, of a single piece of bone, I recognize and reconstruct the portion of the whole from which it would have been taken. The whole being to which this fragment belonged appears in my mind’s eye.
GEORGES CUVIER
Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development.
More Georges Cuvier Quotes
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At the sight of a single bone, of a single piece of bone, I recognize and reconstruct the portion of the whole from which it would have been taken. The whole being to which this fragment belonged appears in my mind’s eye.
GEORGES CUVIER -
It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.
GEORGES CUVIER -
It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored and to make my reader acquainted with a species of Remains, which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly neglected.
GEORGES CUVIER -
The appearance of the bones of quadrupeds, especially those of complete bodies in the strata, tells us either that the layer itself which carries them was in earlier times dry land or that dry land was at least formed in the immediate area.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Audubon’s works are the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.
GEORGES CUVIER -
The observer listens to nature: the experimenter questions and forces her to reveal herself.
GEORGES CUVIER -
But the revolutions and changes which are responsible for the present state of the earth are not limited to the upsetting of the ancient strata and to the ebbing of the sea after the formations of new layers.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a long time they were covered by waters which did not sustain any life.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Moreover, it thus follows that not a great deal of time was needed for the large animals of the three major parts of the world to become known to the people who spent time on the coasts of those regions.
GEORGES CUVIER -
The works which this man [Joseph Banks] leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent; and yet his name will shine out with lustre in the history of the sciences.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development.
GEORGES CUVIER -
All organs of an animal form a single system, the parts of which hang together, and act and re-act upon one another; and no modifications can appear in one part without bringing about corresponding modifications in all the rest.
GEORGES CUVIER -
The lowest and most level land areas show us, especially when we dig there to very great depths, nothing but horizontal layers of material more or less varied, which almost all contain innumerable products of the sea.
GEORGES CUVIER -
My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.
GEORGES CUVIER -
Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the earth must have had a more decisive effect on the terrestrial quadrupeds than on the marine animals.
GEORGES CUVIER