Paleontology and Stratigraphy

During the 17th century the guiding principles of paleontology

and historical geology began to emerge in the work
of a few individuals. Nicolaus Steno, a Danish scientist
and theologian, presented carefully reasoned arguments
favouring the organic origin of what are now called fossils.
Also, he elucidated three principles that made possible
the reconstruction of certain kinds of geologic events in
a chronological order. In his Canis carcariae dissectum caput
(1667; “Dissected Head of a Dog Shark”), he concluded
that large tongue-shaped objects found in the strata of
Malta were the teeth of sharks, whose remains were buried
beneath the seafloor and later raised out of the water
to their present sites.
This excursion into paleontology led Steno to confront
a broader question. How can one solid body,
such as a shark’s tooth, become embedded in another
solid body, such as a layer of rock? He published his
answers in 1669 in a paper titled “De solido intra naturaliter
contento dissertationis” (“A Preliminary Discourse
Concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Processes of Nature
Within a Solid”). Steno cited evidence to show that when
the hard parts of an organism are covered with sediment,
it is they and not the aggregates of sediment that
are firm. Consolidation of the sediment into rock may
come later, and, if so, the original solid fossil becomes
encased in solid rock. He recognized that sediments settle
from fluids layer by layer to form strata that are originally
continuous and nearly horizontal. His principle
of superposition of strata states that in a sequence of
strata, as originally laid down, any stratum is younger
than the one on which it rests and older than the one
that rests upon it.