D. Vasco da Gama e o descobrimento do caminho marítimo para a Índia imortalizados na Heráldica e Falerística, nas Ciências Naturais e no registo paleontológico

Abstract

The aim of the Faith, of the Empire, of new horizons and richness put Portugal at the forefront of the European expansionist movement toward Western overseas. The discovery of the maritime way to India, between 1497 and 1499, through an expedition led by D. Vasco da Gama, would profoundly change the political and economic sceneries of that period of Renaissance, but would also result in the catalysis of the advances on Science and Technology, becoming an indelible mark of Portuguese expansion. As a remarkable personage of the nobility from the Manueline era, of those that made overseas and the Far East as a space of feats and aggrandizements, the Count of Vidigueira also contributed significantly to enrich the Portuguese history of Heraldry and Phaleristics. This was achieved not only through its coat of arms ennobled with those of the Kingdom itself, despite an almost imperceptible change (gold bezants instead of silver ones), but also, later, during commemorative events of the great journey, which motivated the creation of honorary, medallist and numismatic distinctions, among others. At the same time, because Natural Sciences would benefit from the geographic discovery of the World, of which the gesture of the route of India and spices is a major attribute, Palaeontology did not fail to remember the great navigator and statesman. By this way, in 1898, four centuries after the arrival in Calicut, it was up to Paul Choffat - an important pioneer of this science in Portugal and collaborator of the Geological Commission - to honour D. Vasco da Gama through the creation and description of a new genus (Vascoceras) and type-species (Vascoceras gamai) of Upper Cretaceous ammonites (Mollusca, Cephalopoda). These fossils are presently housed in the Geological Museum and the National Museum of Natural History and Science, in Lisbon, where they stand out as an important heritage and the record of a group of organisms already extinct, but which in a remote past inhabited regions where the Portuguese expansion would arrive.