Abstract

Following Cuvier, Lyell was readily prepared to accept a succession of species extinctions in the past but he rejected Cuvier’s ideas on episodes of catastrophic mass extinction. In the Principles of Geology he argued against organic progression in the fossil record, believing instead that organic traces had been substantially removed from older rocks by metamorphism and other factors, and that groups such as land mammals should not be expected, except very rarely, in the marine strata of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. He did, however, accept that the human species was of modern origin, but emphasized that the most significant feature of humanity emergence was in the moral rather than the physical sphere. Lamarck’s theory of evolution involving species transmutation was vehemently rejected; like Cuvier, Lyell believed in the stability of species. As evidence continued to accumulate in favour of some kind of organic progression in the stratigraphic record, Lyell’s resistance eventually crumbled, but he continued to believe in the extreme imperfection of the fossil record. Like Darwin, he could find no direct evidence from it for evolution. In the 1860s he eventually came to accept some form of evolution, while adhering to the rest of his uniformitarinism, but continued to reject Darwin’s theory of natural selection.