Franz Unger and plant evolution: Representations of plants through time

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry B. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Plant Evolution ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Fossil Evidence

ABSTRACT This chapter will highlight a series of lithographs produced by Franz Unger and Josef Kuwasseg that emphasize how Unger used plants to represent different periods of earth history. While Henry De la Beche is credited with the first depiction of ancient life through art (Duria antiquior), Unger’s work was the first to illustrate how plants could be used as indicators of changes in life history. In collaboration with artist Josef Kuwasseg, he embarked on a project entitled The Primitive World in Its Different Periods of Formation that consisted of 14 lithographs that were published in 1851. The title was unique in that it combined the concepts of a “primitive world,” or the widely accepted contemporary idea of undifferentiated deep time, with our modern concept of different periods of earth history. Unger selected periods for this project based upon major strata, but his botanical roots led him to emphasize the importance of plants in each lithograph. The series begins with the “Transition Period,” or the strata that contain the most fossil evidence to develop a reconstruction, and ends with a depiction of the arrival of man in a plant-filled world. This series of lithographs offers a unique contribution to the history and philosophy of geology as Unger recognized the importance of plants to our understanding of geology and deep time in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Major features of protistan evolution: controversies, problems and a few answers

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-80
Author(s):  
Jere H Lipps
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Huge Number ◽  
Geologic Time ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Important Development ◽  
Fossil Evidence

The major features of protist evolution are fraught with controversies, problems and few answers, especially in early Earth history. In general they are based on molecular data and fossil evidence that respectively provide a scaffold and details of eukaryotic phylogenetic and ecologic histories. 1. Their origin, inferred from molecular sequences, occurred very early (>;3Ga). They are a chimera of different symbiont-derived organelles, including possibly the nucleus. 2. The initial diversification of eukaryotes may have occurred early in geologic time. Six supergroups exist today, each with fossils known from the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic. 3. Sex, considered an important development, may have been inherited from bacteria. 4. Precambrian protists were largely pelagic cyst-bearing taxa, but benthic forms were probably quite diverse and abundant. 5. Protists gave rise to animals long before 600 Ma through the choanoflagellates, for which no fossil record exists. 6. Acritarchs and skeletonized protists radiated in the Cambrian (544-530 my). From then on, they radiated and became extinct at all the major events recorded in the metazoan fossil record. 7. Protists dominated major environments (shelves and reefs) starting with a significant radiation in the Ordovician, followed by extinctions and other radiations until most died out at the end of the Permian. 8. In the Mesozoic, new planktic protozoa and algae appeared and radiated in pelagic environments. 9. Modern protists are important at all trophic levels in the oceans and a huge number terrestrial, parasitic and symbiotic protists must have existed for much of geologic time as well. 10. The future of protists is likely in jeopardy, just like most reefal, benthic, and planktic metazoans. An urgent need to understand the role of protists in modern threatened oceans should be addressed soon.

scholarly journals First Fossil Evidence for the Advance of Replacement Teeth Coupled with Life History Evolution along an Anagenetic Mammalian Lineage

PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. e70743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Jordana ◽  
Nekane Marín-Moratalla ◽  
Blanca Moncunill-Solé ◽  
Pere Bover ◽  
Josep Antoni Alcover ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life History Evolution ◽  
Fossil Evidence ◽  
Mammalian Lineage ◽  
History Evolution

A Dictionary of Plant Sciences

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Plant Physiology ◽  
Plant Evolution ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Fourth Edition ◽  
Physical Dormancy ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
Plant Sciences ◽  
Essential Resource

Over 7,700 entries This new fourth edition has been completely revised and updated, covering all aspects in the field of plant sciences including biochemistry, plant physiology, cytology, ecology, genetics, evolution, biogeography, earth history, and earth sciences. Over 600 new entries, including Rosales, physical dormancy, menthol, and codeine, enhance the dictionary's coverage of botanical terms, key drugs and medicines derived from plants, and plant orders, families, and genera. It also explains many ecological terms, and expands beyond plants to describe fungi and bacteria and how they affect plants. New timelines show important moments in plant evolution, and vernacular plant names have been transferred to a new appendix for ease of use, fully cross-referenced to the A to Z entries. The most up-to-date dictionary available on its subject, this is an essential resource for students of plant sciences and amateur botanists, as well as an entertaining and valuable guide for the plant enthusiast.

The Two Manias: A Study of the Evolution of the Modern Concept of Mania

1981 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Hare
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Dementia Praecox ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Manic Depressive ◽  
Almost Everywhere ◽  
The World ◽  
Functional Psychoses ◽  
First Time

In the year 1899 there occurred an event which has had great consequence for psychiatry. This was the publication of the sixth edition of Emil Kraepelin's textbook, where he introduced for the first time his distinction between manic-depressive insanity and dementia praecox. It was a distinction which rapidly became accepted almost everywhere in the world, and it still forms the basis of our thinking about the nature of the functional psychoses. Kraepelin's concept of mania was quite different from the concept of mania held during most of the nineteenth century; and so, historically speaking, there are two manias, more or less sharply separated by the Kraepelinian revolution. The purpose of the present essay is to give some account of the term mania in its pre-Kraepelinian sense and of the events which led Kraepelin to his new concept; and also (in Part II) to put forward a new idea of why this revolution came about.

scholarly journals Cave men: Stone tools, Victorian science, and the ‘primitive mind’ of deep time

2010 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Pettitt ◽  
Mark J. White
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Phases Of Development ◽  
Victorian Science ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Archaeological Sediments

Palaeoanthropology, the study of the evolution of humanity, arose in the nineteenth century. Excavations in Europe uncovered a series of archaeological sediments which provided proof that the antiquity of human life on Earth was far longer than the biblical six thousand years, and by the 1880s authors had constructed a basic paradigm of what ‘primitive’ human life was like. Here we examine the development of Victorian palaeoanthropology for what it reveals of the development of notions of cognitive evolution. It seems that Victorian specialists rarely addressed cognitive evolution explicitly, although several assumptions were generally made that arose from preconceptions derived from contemporary ‘primitive’ peoples. We identify three main phases of development of notions of the primitive mind in the period.

The Politics of Anthropology

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human History ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Cumulative Change ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
Jacob's Ladder

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY ORIGINALLY FOUND THEIR more immediate inspiration in an evolutionary or Jacob's Ladder vision of human societies, the idea of Progress. Social forms were seen as located along some great Chain of Being, which eventually leads to this-worldly salvation by this-worldly means. But there the resemblance ends. Sociology was rooted in a primarily historical evolutionism, in the perception, by the generation of Condorcet and Hegel, that human history is a story of cumulative change, and in the hope that the pattern of this change was the key to the meaning of life. History was to reveal the inner potential and destiny of human society. By contrast, the evolutionism which somewhat later, around the middle of the nineteenth century, gave birth to anthropology, was markedly biological, and came to be much influenced by Darwin.

scholarly journals Thracology and Nationalism in Bulgaria. Deconstructing Contemporaneous Historical and Archaeological Representations

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 85-110
Author(s):  
Ivan Marinov ◽  
Nicolas Zorzin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Bulgarian People ◽  
Theoretical Developments

It is now widely acknowledged that Bulgarian academic discourses of the country’s so-called communist era (1945-1989) were heavily politicized with the aim of nationalizing and ethnicizing the history of the Bulgarian people. This communist era phenomenon subscribes to a chronologically vaster process of nationalist continuum recognized to have spanned from the middle-end of the nineteenth century to at least the early 1990s. Despite this trend, Bulgarian academics, especially in the field of archaeology, have more recently presented their post-communist, transition period disciplines as ideology-free, objective, scientific research. In this paper, we provide examples of recent theoretical developments and interpretations in the sub-field of thracology – studies of ancient Thracian culture – that indicate that this claim to objectivity is unfounded. Based on the examples provided we argue that not only have Bulgarian academic discourses in the fields in question not severed with the ethnicizing practices of the so-called nationalist continuum of the pre-communist and communist eras, but they are now flourishing on the nationalist foundation of the preceding century and a half. As such discourses are reproduced unquestioningly in specialized publications, their influence on right wing populism is incontestable as they provide the latter, wittingly or not, with the scientific authority it needs to justify its ethnicizing of “historical” tenets of racial and social discrimination.

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