An image featuring fake fossils of spiders (including webs) published by Beringer in 1726, and the holotype of the giant salamander that Scheuchzer, around the same time, mistook for a ‘sinner drowned during the Flood’. Source: LITHOGRAPHIAE WIRCEBURGENSIS, J.B.A. BERINGER, 1726 & TEYLERS MUSEUM
Palaeobiologist Jelle Reumer passionately and wittily illustrates the shifts in thinking about fossils, using relics held in Haarlem as his guide: from Archaeopteryx to the ‘Flood Man’.
‘What did the curious person of the 18th century and later make of a petrified shell or an enormous jawbone? (…) We might call it “the discovery of the fossil” – that slowly dawning realisation that fossils are the remains of organisms that once lived, long ago, in an environment that no longer exists’, writes palaeobiologist Jelle Reumer in the prologue of De reuzensalamander. In it, the Utrecht emeritus professor of vertebrate palaeontology guides his readers deftly and perceptively through the history and frayed edges of fossils and the associated scientific discipline: palaeontology. It is a vast subject, which Reumer makes manageable by taking the collection of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem as his thread. The book is dedicated to former honorary curator John de Vos, who introduced Utrecht students to the colourful history of palaeontology by taking them on tours of the fossils and library at Teylers.
De reuzensalamander is the result of an agreement that De Vos and Reumer made in 2012: ‘I’ll do the talking and you’ll do the writing.’ It is a biography of palaeontology and a tribute to the Teylers Museum, its remarkable fossil collection, the people who studied it, and the places where the specimens were found. Richly entertaining stories about fake fossils – or Lügensteine – from Würzburg, the ‘Flood Man’ Homo diluvii testis from Öhningen, the stolen mosasaur from Maastricht, the rediscovered Archaeopteryx from the Altmühltal, and the controversial Pithecanthropus (now: Homo) erectus from Java. For many palaeobiologists this may be familiar territory, but Reumer brings a critical eye to these fossils, serves up – sometimes in considerable detail – lesser-known aspects of their discoverers or find sites, and places the discoveries and their interpretations in historical perspective.
The almost five hundred fake fossils (Lügensteine) – depicting fish, mating frogs, and Hebrew letters – about which court physician Johann Beringer of Würzburg proudly published in 1726, mark the prevailing view of the time that fossils were spontaneous formations of nature. Reumer finds it implausible, given the sheer number of forged specimens, that the rather arrogant Beringer was the victim of a prank by students or colleagues. He favours the interpretation that it was an attempt by Beringer to put himself and Würzburg on the map that simply got out of hand, in the hope that the fossils would ‘bring his city as much fame as the sweet juice of the grape’.
The book is richly documented and beautifully illustrated. It naturally also takes the reader through the remarkable story of Homo diluvii testis – ‘Teylers’ palaeontological Mona Lisa‘ – which the renowned professor and city physician Johann Scheuchzer in Zürich likewise presented around 1726 as evidence of a sinner drowned during the Flood. This represents a paradigm shift: fossils are remnants of the Biblical Flood. It was the French anatomist Georges Cuvier who, in 1811, ‘transformed the wretched drowned man into an extinct giant salamander’ (now: Andrias scheuchzeri). ‘A paradigmatic metamorphosis’, whose holotype remains in Haarlem to this day. The book almost cries out for a (renewed) visit to this museum, which is itself almost a fossil. ‘My story about the discovery of fossils and the thinking about them is laid out in the old oak display cases.’
DE REUZENSALAMANDER – EEN GESCHIEDENIS VAN DE PALEONTOLOGIE – Jelle Reumer
Hardback, 414 pages, €35