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Catholic Palaeontologists

PalaeontologyThis slide set presents a brief biography of the following

palaeontologists who were practicing Catholics:

Georgius Agricola - Father of MineralogyAthanasius Kircher - ‘master of a hundred arts’

Nicholas Steno - Father of Geology and StratigraphyJoachim BarrandeAbbot Ambrogio Soldani - Father of Micro-palaeontology

Pierre Joseph van BenedenWilhelm Waagen

Fr Teilhard de ChardinTheodore Verhoeven

PalaeontologyGeorgius Agricola (1494-1555)Known as the Father of Mineralogy

Studied medicine, chemistry and physics and wrote a systematic treatise on mining and extractive metallurgy in De Re Metallica

He also wrote on rocks, minerals & fossils in De Natura Fossilium making fundamental contributions to structural geology, mineralogy, and palaeontology

PalaeontologyAthansius Kircher (1601-1680)Jesuit scholar and ‘master of a hundred arts’ including oriental studies, medicine and geology

His work on geology included studies of volcanoes and fossils, which puzzled him. He understood that some were the remains of animals which had turned to stone, but ascribed others to human invention or to the spontaneous generative force of the earth

PalaeontologyBlessed Nicholas Steno (1638-1686)

Known as the Father of geology and stratigraphy

Despite a relatively brief scientific career, Nicholas Steno's work on the formation of rock layers and the fossils they contain was crucial to the development of modern geology. The principles he stated continue to be used today by geologists and palaeontologists

Geologist and palaeontologist

He made a detailed study of rocks, engaging workmen specially to collect fossils, and in this way he obtained upwards of 3500 species of graptolites, brachiopoda, mollusca, trilobites and fishes.

The district of Prague, Barrandov, is named in his honour

PalaeontologyJoachim Barrande (1799-1883)

PalaeontologyAbbot Ambrogio Soldani (1736-1808)Known as the Father of micro-palaeontology

He also taught chemistry and natural sciences in addition to theology and philosophy

Soldani was the first person to publish an extensive research dedicated to the small fossils found in the Pl iocene and P l e i s t o c e n e s e d i m e n t s o f Tuscany

PalaeontologyPierre-Joseph Van Beneden (1809-1894)Zoologist & Palaeontologist who originally studied parisitology

He did extensive research in marine biology, and in 1843 established an aquarium and marine laboratory in Ostend. He studied whales and fossil whales as well as fossil seals.

He was a devout Catholic and exhibited "the widest toleration for the views of others".

Palaeontology

Wilhelm Waagen (1841-1900)Geologist and palaeontologist

Waagen was a professor of geology, mineralogy and palaeontology for several European universities. He wrote on the German Jura and its fossils, and conducted pioneering work in the Salt Range of India on the Early Triassic ammonoid succession.

Palaeontology

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)Philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a palaeontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man (fraudulent) and Peking Man.

He became a friend of Henri Breuil and took part with him, in 1913, in excavations in the prehistoric painted caves in the northwest of Spain, at the Cave of Castillo.

Palaeontology

Theodor Verhoeven (1907-1990)Catholic priest, missionary and amateur archaeologist who was responsible for significant paleontological discoveries in Indonesia of archaic stone tools in association with the fossils of stegodontids (dwarf elephants) some 800,000 years old, indicating that islands in Wallacea had been reached by Homo erectus before modern humans appeared there