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The Story of the Elephants: Cuvier

It is amusing to note the devices to which people resorted in order to combat this revolutionary teaching. Thus, when Cuvier first announced the discovery of the fossil remains of the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros in the superficial deposits of continental Europe, he was gravely reminded of the elephants introduced into Italy by Pyrrhus in the Roman wars, and afterwards in the Roman triumphal procession or the games at the Colosseum.

It was only by means of minute anatomical differences that he was able to show that the bones and teeth of these elephants must have belonged to a species unlike those now living. But these differences proved too subtle for even scientific men to appreciate, so slight was their knowledge of anatomy compared with his; so that they were either disallowed or explained away. But he was not to be beaten, and appealed to the fact that similar remains occurred in Great Britain, whither neither Romans nor others could have introduced such animals. These are his words: "If, passing across the German Ocean, we transport ourselves into Britain, which in ancient history by its position could not have received many living elephants besides that one which Cæsar brought thither, according to Polycenus; we shall, nevertheless, find these fossils in as great abundance as on the Continent."

Another crushing answer to the absurd explanations of Cuvier's countrymen was added by the sagacious Dean Buckland, who pointed out that in England, as on the Continent, the remains of elephants are accompanied by the bones of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, animals which not even Roman armies could have subdued or tamed! Owen also adds that the bones of fossil elephants are found in Ireland, where Cæsar's army never set foot. It was in 1796 that Cuvier announced that the teeth and bones of the European fossil elephants were distinct in species from both the African and the Indian elephant, the only two living species (El. africanus and El. indicus). This fundamental fact opened out to him new views about the creation of the world and its inhabitants, and a rapid glance over other fossil bones in his collection showed him the truth and the value of this great idea (namely, the existence of extinct types), to which he consecrated the rest of his life. Thus palæontology may be said to have been founded on the Mammoth.