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Invertebrate Paleontology and Evolutionary Thinking in the US and Britain, 1860–1940

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Abstract

The role of paleontology in evolutionary biology between the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 and the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1940s (the post-Darwin, pre-Synthesis [PDPS] period) is frequently described as mostly misguided failure. However, a significant number of American and British PDPS invertebrate paleontologists of this period did devote considerable attention to evolution, and their evolutionary theories and conclusions were a good deal more diverse and nuanced than previous histories have suggested. This paper brings into focus a number of important but underrecognized aspects of the history of paleontology within the history of biology, including that PDPS paleontologists were not all as theoretically backward as they have been portrayed; that the post-Synthesis narrative of the history of evolution should be continually reevaluated, in part to decouple historical understanding from the agendas of authors who have used history to advance particular views of evolution; and that there is a much richer story to be told about the history of evolutionary biology in both the pre- and post-Synthesis eras.

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Notes

  1. The definition, temporal duration, and even reality of the Synthesis have been abundantly debated (Mayr and Provine 1980; Smocovitis 1996; Cain 2009, 2013). Here it is treated as a coherent and genuinely important intellectual juncture, extending over at least the period 1935–1950, that significantly altered the way both paleontologists and neontologists studied evolution.

  2. Peter Bowler (1976, 1983, 1994, 1996, 2017a, b) has also noted a shortage of historical research on both paleontology and morphology during this period and suggested that paleontology as a whole was more diverse and subtle than usually acknowledged. On this point, see also Rainger (1986, p. 469).

  3. For example, Timothy Abbott Conrad (1803–1877), James Hall (1811–1898), Charles Walcott (1850–1927), Gilbert Harris (1865–1952), Charles Weaver (1880–1958), and Katherine Palmer (1895–1982).

  4. In the US these included Charles Beecher (1856–1904), Alpheus Hyatt (1838–1902), Robert Tracy Jackson (1861–1948), and Amadeus Grabau (1870–1946), among others. In Britain these included Francis Bather (1863–1934), William Dickson Lang (1878–1966), Arthus Trueman (1894–1956), and T. Neville George (1904–1980), among others.

  5. See also Nicholson (1896, p. 60).

  6. The term orthogenesis was coined in 1893 by German zoologist Wilhelm Haacke (1855–1912) (Haacke 1893; see Levit and Olsson 2006), and it became widely known mainly through the mainly neontological work of another German zoologist, Theodor Eimer (1843–1898) (see Eimer 1890, 1898). Orthogenesis nevertheless quickly came to be most closely associated with paleontology (Bowler 2017a, b).

  7. The history of interpretation of Gryphaea is reviewed in detail by Gould (1972, Gould 1980) and Hallam and Gould (1975).

  8. There is no gradual transition between the putative ancestor Liostrea irregularis and Gryphaea arcuata, and Gryphaea did not change its coiling through time. According to Gould, Trueman’s conclusion was a product of a “variety of biometric errors” by him “and later interpreters” resulting from “a failure to deal properly with the allometric consequences of phyletic increase in size in Gryphaea” (1972, p. 114).

  9. Cloud (1941) attributes the term homeomorphy to Buckman (1895, p. 456, see also 1901, p. 231), but Haas and Simpson (1946, p. 329) state that it originated with Palmén (1884, p. 17) as homomorphe [also spelled homoeomorphy; Buckman (1908), George (1962)].

  10. Beecher (1901), Lang (1923b), Fenton (1931), Bulman (1933), Teichert (1949).

  11. Parallel trends were identified in, e.g., graptolites (Elles 1924, 1933; Bulman 1933); gastropods (Hyatt 1883), and ammonites (Hyatt 1889). A representative recent definition of “parallel evolution” is: “The evolution of similar or identical features independently in related lineages, though usually to be based on similar modifications of the same developmental pathways” (Futuyma 1998, p. 769).

  12. See also Fenton (1935, pp. 159–161). Parallelism might even be helpful in biostratigraphy by using the “stage of evolution” as a biostratigraphic marker (Elles 1924; Thomas 1927; Neaverson 1928, pp. 8–9; Willard 1930).

  13. Williams stated that the book was based on notes for his class at Cornell (Williams 1895b). See reviews by Bownocker (1896), Packard (1898, p. 634), and Smith Woodward (1905, p. 70). It was also later praised by Teichert (1958, p. 103) and Weller (1960, p. 1016). See also Tamborini (2015).

  14. The lack of wide acceptance of natural selection in the PDPS period has been referred to as the “eclipse of Darwinism” (Bowler 1983) and is widely accepted by historians of evolution (Smocovitis 1996; Ruse 2009, but see Largent 2009).

  15. Invertebrate paleontologists during this period who accepted a significant role for selection, at least under certain circumstances, included Dall (1877, see also Lindberg 1998), Ortmann (1896), Bather (1927, p. cii), Berry (1928), and Sutton (1934).

  16. This is roughly synonymous with earlier use of orthogenesis for evolutionary process. After the Synthesis, directed evolution as a process came to have a largely negative connotation (Simpson 1944, p. 151), although it has been used very occasionally in modern literature (Grehan and Ainsworth 1985).

  17. This is similar to the modern field of evolutionary-developmental biology (“evo-devo”), which treats development during ontogeny as an important determinant of evolutionary change (e.g., Carroll 2008).

  18. As Lang described it: “impulses of definite and accumulative variation, when once initiated, carried the organisms along a predictable path leading indifferently to destruction or survival, and were only modified, but seldom controlled, by the environment” (Lang 1923a, p. 12).

  19. Donovan (1973, p. 13) stated that the paper by Trueman and Williams (1925) “was the last in the English-language literature on Jurassic ammonites to give prominence to the theory of recapitulation.”

  20. The reference to Agassiz is from Mayer (1911, p. 131); see also Hyatt (1897, p. 216).

  21. The term anagenesis was also proposed independently by Bernhard Rensch (1954, trans. 1959, p. 281) to refer to evolutionary change within a single lineage, and this is the sense in which it is used today (e.g., Eldredge and Gould 1972; Futuyma 1998). On the relationship of historic to current usage of anagenesis, see Allmon (2016).

  22. Newell (1953). For late advocacy of it in vertebrate paleontology see Swinton (1970).

  23. The early history of industrial paleontology (e.g., exactly who went into it when and why) has not been carefully studied, but see Arnold (1923), Schenck (1940), Owen (1975), Rainger (2001), Sepkoski (2009, p. 18, 2013b, p. 356), and Gries (2017).

  24. Smocovitis briefly suggested this as an important factor (1996, p. 64n).

  25. The closely related term “phylogenetic inertia” has also gained popularity in recent years; see, e.g., Blomberg and Garland (2002), and Shanahan (2011). See also Bowler (2017b).

  26. I thank David Sepkoski for suggesting this point.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the late Michele Aldrich as well as Bill Brice, Dana Friend, three anonymous reviewers, and especially David Sepkoski and Chris Manias for comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, and to Andrew Matthiessen, Andrielle Swaby, Amanda Schmitt, Katie Bagnall-Newman, and Chelsea Steffes for editorial assistance.

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    Warren D. Allmon

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Allmon, W.D. Invertebrate Paleontology and Evolutionary Thinking in the US and Britain, 1860–1940. J Hist Biol 53, 423–450 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09599-1

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