 Ancient authorities, such as the Roman author Pliny the Elder, in his "Naturalis Historia", had suggested that these stones fell from the sky or from the Moon.Others were of the opinion, also following ancient authors, that fossils naturally grew in the rocks.Steno's contemporary Athanasius Kircher, for example, attributed fossils to a "lapidifying virtue diffused through the whole body of the geocosm", considered an inherent characteristic of the earth – an Aristotelian approach.