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Summary
Many of the major works of 18th- and 19th-century European ichthyology depended on “second hand” information that could not directly be verified. Since their authors had few opportunities to travel outside Europe, they critically depended on specimens and accompanying information from contacts abroad. This chapter examines the strategies of gathering, organizing and verifying zoological information in Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Natural History of German and Foreign Fishes (1782–1795) which presented one of the first accounts of “all” known fish species according to the Linnean system. Bloch’s case illustrates how 18th-century naturalists crucially depended on textual-critical skills to extract facts from often narrative and anecdotal source material.
Nineteenth-century European ichthyologists seldom had the opportunity to study live specimens of fishes from other continents and often had to rely on more or less reliable travel accounts and reports from colonial administration posts. The discovery of the respiratory organs of air-breathing fishes illustrates the difficulty to examine questionable information. Paradoxically, it was the very distrust in reports from far abroad that led to the discovery of the respiratory behaviour of these animals. Accounts of the climbing perch (Anabas testudineus), a fish that reportedly could climb into trees to drink palm wine required explanations for such incredible claims and inspired more research on this topic. In addition to comparative analyses of other species, zoologists were also dependent on information that required stringent forms of source criticism. As this case shows, rumours and hearsay could play a catalytic role in a discipline that typically relied on empirical methods and direct observation.
Abstract
A new fossil leaf-toed gecko, Euleptes gallica sp. nov., is described from the early Miocene locality Montaigu, France. The species is the third record of leaf-toed geckos in the early Miocene of Europe. A palaeobiogeographical interpretation suggests that the modern form is a relic endemite of the western Mediterranean region which survived the extinction of its congeneric relatives by being isolated on the Corso-Sardinian microplate, which left its former position at the beginning of the Miocene.