Palaeontology in South America bureaucracy, adventurers, and the discovery of fossil mammals in the early nineteenth-century colonial archives

Abstract

Historiography has tended to connect the fossil animals discovered in the soil of the Americas with the evidence of the theory of evolution. This chapter reveals the problems created by this perspective for understanding the questions at stake. An introduction to the main historiographical issues is followed by a perspective on the emergence of the nineteenth-century neologism “palaeontology” that discusses the locations where this term was first proposed and used, as well as unsolved questions regarding its circulation. The discussion reveals how important it is to go beyond the main characters identified by historians and beyond intellectual centers in Britain and France. The discussion turns to the discovery of the fossil genus Megatherium in a context where “palaeontology” did not yet exist as a discipline and where fossils did not provide evidence for evolutionary theory. The meaning of those bones must be understood in a context without Darwin’s Origin of species. Examining a series of episodes about the extraction of the skeleton that was going to be known as Megatherium, this chapter reflects upon how historiography has ignored many agents, ideas, and interests at stake, most importantly the crucial role of Spanish bureaucracy and bureaucrats. It examines what happened in Buenos Aires after the departure of the skeletons, how the news circulated in the region – in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lima. The result provides a new perspective on the generation of ideas as well as the communication and the flow of scientific news across places.