What are the Most Important Historical Fossil Finds?
There are hundreds or even thousands of highly important fossil finds, but a few stand out as forever changing the way we look at a large taxon of animals or epoch of palentological history. The fossil finds that stand out the most are 1) the discovery of a mosasaur (aquatic reptile) by Georges Cuvier in 1808, which ushered in the paleontological “Age of Reptiles”, 2) discoveries of giant armadillos and giant sloths by Darwin in the 1850s, which helped him formulate his Origin of Species, 3) the discovery of the dinosaur-bird Archaeopteryx in 1861, which provided crucial support for that theory, 4) the renaissance of fossil-hunting at the Cambrian-aged Burgess shale in the 1970s and 1980s, which revealed the forerunners of most modern animal phyla, and 5) the realization of the importance of the Ediacaran-aged Mistaken Point Assemblage in Newfoundland, which revealed well-preserved fossils of some of the earliest multicellular animals known. Though fossil finds have been occurred since
