1660-1709

English paleontologist and botanist whose illustrated catalog of fossils from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum (1699) contains letters to John Ray on fossil origins. Lhwyd incorrectly maintained that mists transported animal spawn and minute seeds great distances, after which they penetrated deep into the ground where they germinated and grew to complete or partial replicas in stone. Lhwyd's Archaeologia Britannica (1707) contained the first comparative study of Celtic languages as well as the first Gaelic dictionary.