Nicolas Steno

Nicolas Steno was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in anatomy and geology. He became a Catholic bishop in his later years.
by 1659 he questioned the knowledge of the natural world accepted in his time. He questioned the idea that fossils grew in the ground, and the explanations of rock formation. His investigations made him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology.
Geology and stratigraphy.
Steno, in his "Dissertationis prodromus" of 1669 is credited with four of the defining principles of the science of stratigraphy. Much simplified, his ideas were:
Steno's ideas still form the basis of stratigraphy and were key in the development of James Hutton's theory of infinitely repeating cycles of seabed deposition, uplifting, erosion, and submersion.