A.G. Camper, Cuvier en het mosasaurusvraagstuk: een case-study van Cuviers paleontologie

Abstract

A.G. Camper, Cuvier and the mosasaur problem: a case-study of Cuvier's paleontology In an earlier issue of this journal I have argued — contrary to established opinion — that Cuvier's lois zoologiques, far from being rationalizations after the fact, were an dispensable guide to his study of the fossil past. In this article, this interpretation is corroborated by means of a case-study, to wit Cuvier's and A.G. Camper's investigations of the Maastricht mosasaur. More than thirty years after the first finds, as a result of the joint efforts of Camper and Cuvier, the mosasaur was finally identified as an extinct lizard. A.G. Camper's work on the mosasaur, his most important contribution to paleontology, is treated in some detail. It is pointed out that he arrived at his interpretation of the animal by a scrupulous application of the comparative method. However, his analysis left some doubts as to the zoological affinities of the mosasaur with other reptiles. Here Cuvier offered the final analysis. Cuvier vindicated Camper's interpretation and removed all doubts concerning the affinities of the animal. It is argued that Cuvier's more conclusive analysis was a direct result of his application of the lois zoologiques. Attention is also paid to the discrepancy between Cuvier's theoretical claims about his method and his actual investigations, an illuminating example of which is to be found in his work on the mosasaur. This discrepancy may have induced some historians to their underestimation of the importance of Cuvier's anatomical laws.