Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Descriptive Information

Title

Sammlung von Merckwürdigkeiten der Natur und Alterthümern des Erdbodens, v. 3

Description

The images shown here from Georg Knorr and Emmanuel Walch’s Collection of Remarkable Natural Objects (Sammlung von Merckwurdigkeiten der Natur, 1755-1775) are typical of the “paper museum” approach to fossils in the mid-18th century. The specimens are devoid of their location or rock context, but exquisitely detailed, which aligns with the focus on classification and taxonomy as opposed to geohistory. Although Knorr and Walch’s illustrations were used in this narrow sense when they were first published, they did inspire later savants in the early 19th century. The fossil plants shown here were the subject of study for Ernst Friedrich von Schlotheim, who identified fern species in the Coal formations of Europe that were clearly terrestrial, extinct, and representative of a former world quite different from modern Europe. In 1828, Adolphe Bronginart (son of Alexandre) would take the geohistorical importance of these plants a step further when he created a directional progression of European fossil plants that showed changing environmental conditions through time: tropical ferns in the “lower Secondaries” (i.e. Carboniferous, 359-299 million years ago), sub-tropical Gymnosperms of the “upper Secondaries” (i.e. Mesozoic, 252-65 million years ago), and temperate Angiosperms in the “Tertiary” (i.e. Cenozoic, 65-0 million years ago).

Call Number (click link to view in library catalog)

Q. 560 K75s v. 3: plates

Authors

Knorr, Georg Wolfgang

Full Title

Sammlung von Merckwürdigkeiten der Natur und Alterthümern des Erdbodens : welche petrificirte Cörper enthält

Date

1755-1774

From the Exhibit

In Search of Lost Time: Fossils and the Record of Previous Worlds

Publisher

A. Bieling

Location

Nürnberg

Language

German

Rights

This item is the physical property of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Intellectual property rights, including copyright, may reside with the materials' creator(s) or their heirs.
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Type

Text

Medium

Book

Bibliographic Citation

Knorr, Georg and Walch, J.S. Emmanuel. Sammlung von Merckwürdigkeiten der Natur und Alterthümern des Erdbodens. Vol. 3. Nürnberg: A. Bieling, 1755-1774.