to Date Rocks,” pages –). Cuv

to Date Rocks,” pages –). Cuvier’s study of fossils had led him
to conclude that in the course of its history the Earth had experienced
many violent “revolutions” that had wiped out most of the existing
animals, which had been replaced by new forms. His “revolutions”
were catastrophic events, and Cuvier’s interpretation of the fossil
record came to be called catastrophism. Buckland was also a keen
and skilled paleontologist. He discovered the fossil bones of a large
reptile, which he named Megalosaurusmeaning “great lizard,” and in
 he discovered the oldest human remains known in Britain up to
that time. Buckland was strongly infl uenced by Cuvier but adapted
Cuvier’s catastrophic theory to introduce a religious component.
Cuvier’s theory was not religious. He believed many catastrophes
might have involved widespread fl ooding, but he never referred any of
them to the biblical fl ood, and he never suggested that the world had
been repopulated by divine creation following mass extinctions. He
did believe that the catastrophes were separated by very long periods
when the Earth was stable.  is implied that the Earth was several
million years old.
Buckland had no diffi culty with this, but to reconcile the evidence
with the Bible he needed to establish that the most recent catastrophe
had been a worldwide deluge—Noah’s fl ood—and he found what he
thought was the evidence he needed in caves.  e Napoleonic Wars
fi nally ended in , and in  Conybeare, Buckland, and their
friend George Bellas Greenough (–) embarked on a tour
of Europe, partly fi nanced by Greenough, who was independently
wealthy.  ey met other geologists, examined collections of geologi-cal specimens, and while they were in Bavaria, they visited caves in
which earlier workers had found fossil bones. One such cave was near
the village of Gailenreuth. Cuvier had identifi ed the bones found in
the Gailenreuth cave as those of giant bears, belonging to a species
now extinct. Some scientists, including Cuvier, believed the bears
had used the cave as a den; others thought the bears had died outside
and their bones had been swept into the cave by fl oodwater. No one
knows what Buckland thought of the matter at the time, but years
later he suggested that the bears had been living in the cave when a
sudden fl ood overwhelmed and drowned them.
Back in England Buckland investigated a cave at Kirkdale, near
Pickering in Yorkshire. Mud fi lled the cave, but embedded in the
mud were fossil bones bearing teeth marks. Buckland found that