For good or for ill, and I’m of the opinion that it is not entirely one or the other, with the development of various technologies and changes in the way the natural world was viewed, many societies have become quite literally disenchanted. And yet…
“Rising sea levels” is among the most common phrases one reads and hears whenever discussions of climate change- particularly anthropogenic climate change – occur. But on a planet where oceans cover over seventy percent of the surface, just how is sea level measured? And for that matter, given changes in technology, as well as in the recent increase in interest in shifting baselines and how they may affect historical data in many of the biological and Earth sciences, have the ways sea level has been measured in the past changed?
What did our ancestors who were unfamiliar with the origins of the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures make of them? Did they recognize such things as belemnites, brachiopods, bits of vertebral columns, and other curious, stone objects extracted from the ground as the remains of creatures from long ago? If so, were such creatures factual or fantastic? And in any case, what useful qualities – or even extraordinary, perhaps even magical, powers – did they assume these mysterious objects might posses?
It was at the BioQuip display for the Entomological Society of America’s 2019 annual meeting that I first became aware of Charles Valentine Riley. Those better versed in the history of entomology than I am are likely shocked by such an admission; however never being one demure from getting his education in public, I readily confess to all such instances of ignorance in my ongoing quest to correct as many of them as possible before finally shuffling off this mortal coil.