Abstract
Vast quantities of specimens collected at the British Museum, and more importantly in France at the (Jardin royal des Plantes medicinales), necessitated the imposition of order on understanding them. There had been attempts made at establishing new taxonomies for vertebrates, but it was essential too that a taxonomy be developed for invertebrates, including, for coral researchers, the polyp. Significant in this process were the related developments taking place in embryology and palaeontology, the relationship between zoophyte taxonomy and reef development, and further improvements in microscopy. Significant in this explosion of ideas and investigations were Lamarck, Cuvier, Lamouroux, Ehrenberg, Milne-Edwards, Dana and especially Darwin. The polyp was finally defined: (cnidarian phylum “coelenterate”,)if not understood
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Notes
- 1.
In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago conducted an experiment in which they combined what they believed may have been the original chemical elements of the earth in a closed container into which they discharged an electrical pulse, thereby attempting to replicate lightning. The experiment produced amino acids, one of the essential building blocks of life.
- 2.
Whereas the other three classes of vertebrates—birds, fish, reptiles—have a single gastrointestinal canal terminating in a cloaca, in all animal vertebrates there are two exit places, urethra and anus, except in the monotremes (Gk. mono, one + trema, hole).
- 3.
Cuvier’s hostility was revealed in his “Eulogy” on the death of Lamarck.
- 4.
English translation of 1857.
- 5.
Today the former Phylum ‘coelenterate’ is the Phylum Cnidaria, and the coelenterates consist of the Cnidaria and the nematocyst-free Ctenopora.
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Bowen, J. (2015). The Era of Intensive Investigation, 1788–1857. In: The Coral Reef Era: From Discovery to Decline. Humanity and the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07479-5_5
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