"These alternations now appear to me to form the problem in geology that it is of most importance to solve....in order to solve it satisfactorily, it would be necessary to discover the cause of these events.... These ideas have haunted, I may almost say have tormented me, during my researches among fossil bones...... researches which embrace buta very small part of those phenomena of the age preceding the last general revolution of the globe, and which are yet intimately connected with all the others..."

Many attempts have been made to answer the charge made to the geological profession by Cuvier to explain these sudden revolutions in the wrong direction.

Among others, Velikovsky tried it through his studies of myths and legends; Hapgood tried it; Hugh Brown attempted, and in the process amassed a tremendous library of geological data.

Every time the cataclysmic concept has risen, the "beast" has been stoned, burned at the stake, beaten to a pulp, and buried with a vengeance; but the corpse won't stay dead. Each time, it raises the lid of its coffin and says in sepulchral tones: "You will die before I."

The latest of the challengers is Prof. Frank C. Hibben, who in his book, The Lost Americans*, said: ".....This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive....What caused the death of forty million animals.... The "corpus delicti" in this mystery may be found almost anywhere. .... Their bones lie bleaching in the sands of Florida and in the gravels of New Jersey. They weather out of the dry terraces of Texas and protrude from the sticky ooze of the tar pits off Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.... The bodies of the victims are everywhere....We find literally thousands together....young and old, foal with dam, calf with cow.....The muck pits of Alaska are filled with evidence of universal death....a picture of quick extinction....Any argumentas to the cause....must apply to North America, Siberia, and Europe as well.