South American mammal diversity and Hernandez’s Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus

Abstract

Following the discovery of the West Indies, philosophers of the XVI and XVII centuries came into contact with a particularly unexpected fauna which was considerably different from the documented animals at that time. These animals included the Xenarthra (the sloth, and armadillo) and Marsupialia. These new discoveries occurred during a period of crisis for the traditional Aristotelian and Galenical sciences. This debate developed in two opposing directions: on the one hand towards the confirmation of the well-established tradition of Magia Naturalis, and on the other towards the Galilean Scientia Nova which encouraged people to follow a more mathematical approach when interpreting nature in all its complexity. The first reports and zoological papers of the seventeenth century express the same wonder at these discoveries as all that was “mirum et insolitum” in the typical baroque style of that time.