Google Doodle: Nicolas Steno’s 374th Birthday
Look how adorable the Google Doodle is today! It’s in celebration of Nicolas Steno’s 374th birthday (why 374th?). Nicolas Steno was a pioneer in anatomy and geology.
Fittingly, today’s green-topped logo is rendered as rock strata with embedded fossils — reflecting twin ideas for which Steno is best known. The strata illustrate Steno’s “principle of original horizonality,” which essentially says that rock layers form horizontally — and only appear differently if later disturbances cause the deviation. And the fossils in the lower stratified rock help illustrate Steno’s “law of superposition,” which — simply put — says that the oldest rock layers are sequentially deposited on the bottom unless otherwise disturbed. (text via Washington Post)
