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De’ Crostacei e degli altri marini corpi che si trovano su’ monti Libri due Di ANton Lazzaro Moro. Venezia, Appresso Stefano Monti, 1740. 4to (271x192); [16], 452 pp. 8 engraved plates. Engraved vignette on title page, initials and tail-pieces. Contemporary vellum, gilt title-piece on spine, marbled edges. Very fine copy on large and crisp paper.

First edition of the most important of Moro’s works, who is often considered one of the fathers of modern geology. Drawing on accounts of the eruption near Santorini, which led to the formation of the island of Nea Kameni in 1707, as well as on the well-documented formation of Monte Nuovo near Pozzuoli in 1538, Moro explained the presence of marine fossils on high mountains with a volcanic origin. According to his hypothesis, rocks on the seabed, containing marine organisms, were lifted by the action of underground fires, forming hills and mountains. “...Moro was one of the first authors to present a directional evolution of the Earth ... The sequence of different eruptions would have led to the conformation of strata-upon-strata that is typical of secondary mountains, with deposits rich in marine fossil remains. ... As can be seen, even if the intuition of the lifting of the seabed to form chains due to underground heat is really ahead of its time and somewhat prescient of Hutton’s theories, however Moro’s mistake relies in connecting all the fossil deposits to material erupted from the primary mountains, and not to the simple decanting of sediments on a calm seabed, as correctly understood by Hutton later. Despite these subsequently falsified aspects, the great intuition of completely shifting the point of view on a question that was much debated at the time remains genuine. In Moro’s theory, in fact, it is no longer the sea level that has to rise enormously to reach the greatest heights, but are the mountains themselves that rise from sea level and do so for thousands of meters, carrying also the embedded remains of marine organisms...” (Romano & Carnevale, p. 120). Moro “... formulated, entirely on his own, a theory on the origin of marine fossils that contains striking foreshadowings of modern palaeontology. His voluminous work, “De’ crostacei ed altri marini corpi che si truovano su’ monti” (On Crustaceans and Other Marine Organisms Found in the Mountains), although translated into German and French a few years later, did not achieve the renown it so richly deserved ... At that time, a lively controversy was raging between “Neptunists” and “Plutonists” which, starting from the specific ground of the dispute over the mysterious origin of marine fossils, implied the general conception of the planet’s geological past and, in some respects, revived themes of the ‘Galilean’ conflict between science and faith, in that it posed an inescapable confrontation with the biblical account of creation. Moro was a staunch Plutonist and, at the same time, a staunch defender of the separation between the scientific method and Revelation; as for the scientific method, he upheld the importance of observing concrete facts and the superiority of this over purely logical-deductive reasoning. )Lamendola, translated). Moro was an abbot, geologist and naturalist; he was the first to discriminate sedimentary from volcanic rocks.  MARCO ROMANO & GIORGIO CARNEVALE The early studies on the Eocene Bolca Fossil-Lagerstätte (Italy) an historical overview In: Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana, 62 (2), 2023, 105-142. Modena; CALOGEO FARINELLA Moro, Anton Lazzaro In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani; FRANCESCO LAMENDOLA Anton Lazzaro Moro e l’origine dei fossili marini , 2014 https://fides-et-ratio.it/2014/12/13/anton-lazzaro-moro-e-lorigine-dei-fossili-marini/; LORENZO SORBINI I fossili di Bolca II Edizione, 1981, pp 25-26. (Seller ref. MC0964)

2000,- EUR
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Sachgebiete: Erstausgaben, Illustrierte Bücher, Paläontologie

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