Question

Natural historians and amateur collectors found large deposits of fossils in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The fossilized animals and plants had been preserved in rock, and they were important evidence about the history of life on earth and how it had changed over time. But scientists also found it difficult to explain the fossil evidence. Please answer these questions: How did catastrophists explain the existence of these fossils and the patterns they showed about how life changed over time? Why were these fossils, especially the patterns of their disappearance (extinctions), such a problem for proponents of evolution? How did proponents of evolutionary theories try to explain the fossil evidence in the 1800s?

Answer 1

a)According to the catastrophists,many of the fossils found from the layers of earth doesn't resembles the present creatures of earth.They also noted that the lmore complex form of fossils are found on the surface of the earth and the simplest fossils are found the deepest we go to the earth layers.But the different layers of the earth as we dug deep shows variation in the morphology and complexity of the fossil.For eg-Major catastrophy like flood or volcanic eruption wiped out the whole creation and replaced by the noval form of life which doesn't match with the previous organisms.

b)Many different types of fossils are found in the layers of rocks and at wide landscape on earth.With each rock layer come major catastrophy might have happened theat became the core reason for the extinction of species ruling earth at that particular period preserving some of the creatures in the form of fossils.The law of superimposition propose that a sedimentary rocks is developed by deposition of particles layer by layer forming bed over bed on top of one another.Thus a lower bed or layer is much older than the upper layer of the bed whic takes thousand of years to take a form of prominant rock.These layers indicates relative age of rock and the fossils burried inside it.

c)Theory which could explain the fossil evidense from 1800 was proposed by naturalist

Lamark "Inheritance of acquired character"-eg-evolution of horse and giraffe.

Malthus "Competition for survival"-eg-Dominant win the competition.

Darvin "Natural selection"-eg-Survival of the fittest