STL Science Center

STL Science Center

18 June 2014

Making Him Famous

Many, many times over it has been mentioned that Romer was famous because of his writing. What was it about his writing that makes Romer so famous and his writings so useful? The things in the writing that make Romer famous are the things that made him a good anatomist, evolutionary and revolutionary thinker, and the attention to detail he showed in his work. Connecting the dots of anatomy and evolution, Romer was quite food at seeing the links between one form and another. He tied together the forms as they evolved over time in his observations. This allowed for the development of storylines that Romer convincingly weaved, sometimes in advance of evidence. To say he made up histories would be completely incorrect; however, there are probably plenty of people out there that believed he was making it up at the time. Since Romer drew the connections during his lifetime many years ago many more pieces of evidence have been recovered from the earth. The work he did on vertebrate evolution furthered the sciences in many different ways. It was due to his understanding of the forms before him and visualizing the evolutionary histories of the animals that he became famous in his area. How he became famous as an educator and author is that his descriptions of what he observed and deduced were relatively easy to follow and informative enough that they can be discussed and followed by even the most novice learners. Unfortunately, as stated before, they are out of date a little bit and are not used outright. Other textbooks build off of his descriptions, clearly, and are used in classrooms today. He continues, therefore, to be referenced and his educational materials used, somewhat, to this day.

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