Fossils

• A paper by Robert Hooke
  Robert Hooke
  Robert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...
  
   is formally published posthumously. Its contents had originally been part of an earlier presentation to the Royal Society of London. This paper provided an argument against prevailing wisdom and advocated the idea that fossils were the remains of actual once-living organisms. Still, it was not enough to change the general consensus of his contemporaries in the scientific community.
• In the second edition of an earlier book (published in 1677), Robert Plot
  Robert Plot
  Robert Plot was an English naturalist, first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum....
  
   concludes that fossils (which he referred to as "lapides sui generis") were not the remains of once-living organisms, but were stones made to look like organisms by some unknown force of nature instituted by God
  God
  God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
  
  to decorate the inner parts of the earth the way flowers beautify its surface.