Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Google doodles Danish geologist Nicolas Steno's 374th birthday

New Delhi: The Google logo appears in the form of a cross section of the earth's crust to commemorate Danish geologist and anatomist Nicolas Steno's 374th birthday.

Steno (also known as Nicolaus Steno, Niels Steensen or Niels Stensen) is regarded as the father of geology and he also made significant contributions to the field of human anatomy. He discovered the parotid salivary duct, also called Stensen's duct.

He was the one to propose the idea that fossils are remains of ancient living organisms and the reason behind the formation of many rocks is sedimentation. Steno was also the first to understand that a careful study of the earth's strata and fossils can give a glimpse of the planet's history as the earth's crust contains a chronological history of geologic events.

Steno later gave up science for religion and became a Roman Catholic in 1667 and was made a bishop in 1677. He died at the age of 48 on November 25, 1686.

Google posted a total of 260 doodles in 2011. This figure is only nominally higher than the 258 doodles that Google put up on its home page in 2010. Some of the doodles were limited to Google's country specific home pages while others appeared globally.

Google recently announced the revamp of its Doodle site (www.google.com/doodles) which houses all Google doodles since the very first back in 1998.

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