Edward Hitchcock - Paleontological Chart

Paleontological Chart

Recently, a paleontological chart was discovered in his Elementary Geology (1840). It shows a branching diagram of the plant and animal kingdom against a geological background. He referred to it as a tree. This 'tree of life' is the earliest known version that incorporates paleontological and geological information. However, it is not a true evolutionary tree of life, because Hitchcock saw a Deity as the agent of change. He explicitly rejected not only atheistic evolution, but a six day creation as well. New species were introduced by a Deity at the right time in the history of the earth. The chart is present in all editions between 1840 and 1859. After Darwin (1859) published his Origin of Species, a tree of life image was generally interpreted as an evolutionary tree. In the 1860 edition of Elementary Geology Hitchcock dropped the chart. In 1863 Hitchcock wrote an article in which he refuted Darwin’s theory of natural selection. After his death in 1864, his son Charles Henry Hitchcock (1836–1919) published a new edition (1870) also without a paleontological Chart. Charles then published books and articles of his own.