Tag: palaeontology

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A shark’s tale

Following the completion of our Life, As We Know It redisplay project earlier this year, we are taking a look at some of the exceptionally skilled people who helped to bring it all together. In this article, model maker Jeremy Hunt and our Vertebrate Palaeontology Collections Manager Emma Nicholls take a deep dive into what we believe is the world’s first 3D reconstruction of the extinct shark Ptychodus as an open water predator…

In six of our newest displays, fossil material found in and around Oxfordshire is used to reconstruct ecosystems from slices of geological time. One of these recreates a marine environment of the Cretaceous Period, between 94 and 84 million years ago, when most of northern Europe was submerged under a warm shallow sea. In these seas swam a formidable 8-metre long shark called Ptychodus.

Until recently, Ptychodus remained something of a mystery: teeth and vertebrae were the only remains scientists could use to work out what it looked like. Its robust, low-domed teeth are covered in deep ridges of enamel that created a mosaic in each jaw. They were capable of crushing shelled prey like a giant nutcracker. Similar teeth in modern sharks are found only in slow-moving species that prowl the seabed, so it was presumed that Ptychodus behaved in the same way.

Fossils of Ptychodus teeth in the new display

But then in 2024 an incredible fossil with much of the animal’s soft tissue preserved was published by Dr Romain Vullo and co-authors. This new fossil revealed clues to the shapes of the fins and their position on the body. The study concluded that Ptychodus was in fact not a bottom-dwelling animal at all, but much more likely to be a fast, agile predator living higher in the water column, and perhaps related to the Great White Shark.

Armed with this recent discovery, we decided to create a three-dimensional model of the reimagined Ptychodus for our Cretaceous display. It had to be a quarter of life-size to fit it in the showcase, but would still be a huge two metres long.

Digital 3D model of a shark, shown in grey, without any skin colouring or texture. The mouth is open and inside is an ammonite being crushed by the shark's plate-like teeth.
An early computer model of the shark and ammonite

“In discussion with Dr Vullo and others we began to decipher the shark’s possible appearance,” says Emma.  “Aspects to sink our teeth into included the skull shape, how it would have fed on hard-shelled free-swimming prey such as ammonites, how the mosaic of teeth sat in the mouth, as well as where and what shape the fins would have been.”

The next stage was to turn these ideas into a realistic model, and for this we turned to specialist model maker Jeremy Hunt. “When I was asked to make the reconstruction of Ptychodus I thought it was a great opportunity to incorporate modern digital techniques and processes that would give great accuracy, but also and flexibility so that adjustments could be made at later stages. This would be really difficult using a traditional clay sculpting approach,” he explains.

Together, Emma and Jeremy began to translate the shark fossil research into draft models on the computer, digitally sculpting versions on-screen. As well as being scaled down to quarter size, the position and pose of the model also needed to work inside the showcase structure and the designs of the rest of the display. Combining computer models helped us to make sure that Ptychodus would fit perfectly and that its method of support could be worked out well ahead of installation.

Digital 3D model of a museum showcase design, shown in grey, without any colouring or texture. The model shows a woman for scale, indicating the case is around 3 metres wide and 2 metres tall. In the case are the modelled contents of the display, including a large shark model.
Digital 3D model of a shark, shown in grey, without any skin colouring or texture. The mouth is open and inside is an ammonite being crushed by the shark's plate-like teeth.
Digital 3D model of an ammonite, shown in grey, without any colouring or texture. The same model is shown from three angles of rotation from side on to almost edge-on, showing the spiral form of it's shell.

To give us a sense of how the final model would actually look, Jeremy 3D-printed little maquettes just a few centimetres long. On these we could check that the anatomy and pose were just what we needed. The maquettes also showed how the shark would be suspended in a diving angle, chomping down on an ammonite which Jeremy was modelling separately, in collaboration with Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, a researcher here at the Museum.

A hand holds out a wooden plinth, painted blue, onto which a 3D printed shark model is mounted on a vertical metal rod. The 3D print is also blue and is approximately 15cm long.
3D-printed maquettes of the model helped us to check its form and pose

Once ready, the model was 3D-printed at its display size of two metres long, allowing Jeremy to create a silicone rubber mould to produce a fibreglass cast of the final structure. Fibreglass is both strong and light, perfect for the display. But the model really came to life when Jeremy hand-painted and airbrushed its colourings and markings based on a research by Emma and a concept drawing by palaeo-artist Julius Csotonyi.

A workshop scene showing a silicone model of shark's body cut into two halves lengthways and laying on a workbench. The interior of the mould is light grey and the exterior is light blue.
A fibreglass shark model mounted on a stand almost vertically, with its head at the top of the image. In the background is workshop.
A fibreglass shark model mounted on a stand horizontally, positioned upside down with its underside upwards. with its head at the top of the image. In the background is workshop.
A fibreglass shark model mounted on a stand horizontally, wrapped in a clear plastic. In the background is workshop.
A set of timber beams set a right angles, acting as a frame to carry a model sitting between them. The model is not visible directly as it is wrapped in plastic packing material including bubble wrap.

Once Ptychodus and the rest of the display were installed, the ammonite was placed in the mouth. It is held safely there by hidden strong magnets, caught permanently between those crushing plates, about to become shark food.

Museum exhibit showing a 2 metre long shark model against a backdrop artwork of an ocean containing drawings of other sharks, fish, ammonites and belemnites in the sea, along with corals, shellfish and lobsters on and burrowing into the seabed. Below this scene are a selection of chalk fossils. On the left the title panel is printed on blue acrylic and shows the display's name as 'In the shadow of a shark'.
The Ptychodus model in the final display at the Museum

“This was a great project to be involved with, and I hope the new displays will be enjoyed by all who visit the Museum,” says Jeremy.

Jeremy Hunt, model-maker

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See more of Jeremy’s work at: www.instagram.com/memsculpt

Dr Ross Anderson climbs a steep, green slope surrounded by pine trees and dramatic mountain scenery.

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Oxford team’s fieldwork revealing how complex life first evolved on Earth 

By Ross Anderson

In Summer 2024, a team of palaeontologists and geologists from the University of Oxford, along with colleagues from Dartmouth College, the University of Washington, and Williams College in the USA, undertook an expedition to the Little Dal Group in the Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories, Canada. Our purpose was to uncover some of the oldest fossil ecosystems that record complex life.

A helicopter parked on a makeshift wooden platform surrounded by fuel drums, with gear and personnel preparing for departure in a remote area.

Photo: Robert Gill
Photo: Robert Gill

Complex life comprises all organisms whose DNA is enclosed in a cell nucleus. This includes animals and plants but excludes bacteria. Today, this complex life accounts for most of the Earth’s biomass, documented biodiversity, and oxygen production. Understanding when and how it first evolved remains one of the central unanswered questions in evolutionary biology.

Two geologists collect rock samples from a cliff in a mountainous area, with rugged peaks in the background.
Photo: Robert Gill
Dr Ross Anderson walks across a rocky, barren valley under a clear blue sky.
Photo: Robert Gill

As palaeontologists, we normally use fossils to reveal the history of life. Fossils tend to preserve larger animals with hard shells or skeletons—creatures such as trilobites, ammonites, dinosaurs, and mammoths. However, the first complex organisms were microscopic and lacked such hard parts. As a result, their soft and fragile cells rarely fossilised. Put simply, we have found it a major challenge to trace the origins of complex life with fossils.

Dr Ross Anderson climbs a steep, green slope surrounded by pine trees and dramatic mountain scenery.
Photo: Robert Gill
Dr Ross Anderson wearing outdoor gear examine a rocky cliff face, one using a small tool to collect rock samples.
Photo: Robert Gill

I have argued that finding rocks made up of antibacterial clay minerals holds the key. These minerals can slow the decay of organic cells long enough for them to survive as fossils. The Little Dal Group contains ~900-million-year-old rocks that are rich in just such clays, making it a prime target for new fossils that might help us unravel the origins of biological complexity.

Close-up of hands holding a slab of dark shale rock with faint fossil-like impressions.
Photo: Robert Gill
Organized rows of white sample bags with geological samples with yellow labels laid out on rocky ground.
Photo: Robert Gill

I was joined in Canada by my DPhil student, George Wedlake, from the Department of Earth Sciences. Together we spent two weeks collecting over 100 rock samples. The samples record an ancient tropical sea not unlike the Bahamas today, where early complex life likely flourished.

Back in Oxford, at the Museum of Natural History, George and I are now examining the samples; dissolving the rocks with hydrofluoric acid to extract and study the tiny fossils. We hope these new fossils will transform our understanding of how complex life first took hold on our planet.

Our fieldwork was funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and by the Oxford NERC Environmental Science Doctoral Training Partnership. It was conducted under permit and with the support of the Sahtú Dene people.

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Museum’s Mary Anning Fossil Gets Stamp of Approval

200 years since OUMNH’s very own Megalosaurus fossils were used in the first scientific description of a dinosaur, the Royal Mail has launched The Age of Dinosaurs, a two-part series of commemorative stamps. The stamps include one series of palaeo-art reconstructions of Mesozoic dinosaurs and reptiles and another series celebrating Mary Anning (1799-1847), a self-taught anatomist and fossil preparator, and one of the most important figures in early geology.

Dr Emma Nicholls and colleagues discuss some of the fascinating stories behind the species and specimens featured on these stamps.

Megalosaurus stamps

Two of the stamps in the Age of Dinosaurs stamp set include artistic reconstructions of Megalosaurus by the palaeo-artist Joshua Dunlop. The animal that nineteenth-century naturalists once understood to be a lumbering long-legged lizard is now depicted as a fearsome Jurassic predator that ran on its hind legs and tore into prey with its large serrated teeth. Dunlop shows Megalosaurus wading through shallow coastal waters, preparing to pounce on Cryptoclidus¸ a plesiosaur that lived alongside Megalosaurus in Jurassic Britain. The artwork also shows Megalosaurus covered in feathers. Although we don’t have any direct evidence that Megalosaurus was a feathered dinosaur, feather-like filaments have been found among the fossils of other dinosaurs such as Sciurumimus, meaning it is highly possible that Megalosaurus had feathers too.

OUMNH’s famous Megalosaurus type specimen, a lower-right jawbone with teeth
Megalosaurus stamp from the Age of Dinosaurs series

Dapedium stamps

OUMNH collaborated directly with Royal Mail to help produce the Age of Dinosaurs miniature sheet, which showcases fossils collected by Mary Anning. One of the stamps in this collection features a photograph of the fossil of an extinct Jurassic fish, Dapedium, which is housed at OUMNH.

Despite Anning’s illustrious reputation, it wasn’t always known that this Dapedium specimen was connected to her — all that was known about it was that it had probably once belonged to William Buckland and had been collected from Lyme Regis.

Stamp from the Age of Dinosaurs series featuring a portrait of Mary Anning
Stamp from the Age of Dinosaurs series featuring a Dapedium fossil from OUMNH

Although Anning is one of the most prolific fossil collectors to have worked in Lyme Regis, naturalists like Buckland often visited Anning to go “fossicking” together, or purchase fossils from her. There are very few archival records of transactions between Anning and other fossil collectors from this time, making it difficult to decipher exactly who extracted fossils such as this, found in nineteenth-century Dorset.

Fortuitously, while Dr Sue Newell was conducting research for her PhD on the Buckland Collection in 2021, she found an exciting letter in OUMNH Archive, dated 3rd September 1829. It was from a former student of Buckland’s, Beriah Botfield, and contained details of two fossils that Buckland had bought from Anning to present to the University of Oxford. Using evidence in the letter, Sue was able to work out that Botfield was referring to a Dapedium fossil which she later recognised tucked away in OUMNH’s fossil store.

Botfield had had the fossil mounted in an expensive (and very heavy!) stone frame, with “Presented by Beriah Botfield Esq. Dapedium politum. Lyme, Dorset” beautifully inscribed on the front surface. At the time, the identity of Anning as the fossil’s original finder, identifier, preparator and vendor, was probably common knowledge and, typically, Botfield did not consider these facts important enough to record on his presentation frame.

The Dapedium fossil is a near-complete example of this Jurassic fish, in which scale patterns and delicate fin structures are preserved in breathtaking detail. Dapedium is the first OUMNH object to grace a Royal Mail stamp – an ideal choice given its scientific and historic importance.

Visit the Museum to see the Dapedium fossil as well as temporary displays about the new stamp collection.

Find out more about our special programme of events, exhibitions, and activities honouring Megalosaurus in 2024: The Oxford Dinosaur That Started It All.

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Of Jumping Mice and Megalosaurus

CELEBRATING THE RECENT ACQUISITION OF AN IMPORTANT ARCHIVE

By Danielle Czerkaszyn, Librarian and Archivist and Grace Exley, AHRC Doctoral Student

200 years since the first scientific description of a dinosaur, the Museum has welcomed a significant archival collection relating to the man who introduced us to Megalosaurus, William Buckland (1784-1856). The archive contains over 1,000 items including letters, notebooks, family papers, prints, and artworks. It joins the Museum’s existing Buckland archive, as well as more than 4,000 geological specimens, and helps fill in the knowledge gaps surrounding the life and work of Oxford’s first Reader in Geology and Mineralogy. Not only is there the potential to learn more about Buckland’s early life as a student at Christ Church, there is also material relating to the wider Buckland family, including his son, the zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland, and wife, the naturalist Mary Buckland (née Morland, 1797-1857).

Among the 70 letters in the archive that are addressed to Mary, there is correspondence from chemist William Wollaston, Scottish polymath Mary Somerville, and a lively letter from John Ruskin, explaining to Mary his disgust at all things marine:

“I dont [sic] doubt that those double natured or no-natured salt water things are very pretty alive, but they disgust me by their perpetual gobbling and turning themselves inside out and on the whole I think for purple and rose colour & pretty shape, I may do well enough with convolvulus’s [sic] & such things which dont [sic] eat each other up, backwards & forwards all day long.”

Ruskin was clearly teasing his friend, as molluscs happened to be Mary’s specialist subject!

Mary Buckland’s notebook, recently acquired by OUMNH

The collection also contains two sketchbooks belonging to Mary, one of which dates from June 1817, seven years before her marriage to William and contains exquisite ink and watercolour illustrations of natural history specimens. 

Illustration of Megalosaurus type fossil by Mary Morland, used in the original 1824 description of the species.
Fulgurite, or, as Mary called it a ‘vitrified sand tube’. These form when lightning strikes the ground, particularly sandy surfaces. Similar examples are present in the remains of Mary’s mineral collection, held by OUMNH.

The sketchbook gives us a rare glimpse into how a nineteenth-century woman learned about natural history.  The book contains copied passages from natural history texts, enabling us to trace what Mary was reading. Her interests spanned geology and mineralogy, and she also included pieces on zoological curiosities and even polar exploration. She read and copied extracts from a variety of sources, some of which – George Shaw’s Zoological Lectures, for example – were intended to suit a lay-audience (as Shaw put it, intended as a “familiar discourse with Lady-Auditors”). However, other elements of her reading were probably never intended for a woman like Mary — she also copied passages from the Transactions of the Geological Society even though women could not join as Fellows until 1919. As archival materials relating to women are often sparse, this is a truly rare and incredibly valuable insight into how Mary used her connections to access resources and the techniques she used to teach herself about natural history.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the notebook is its intricate, exquisite illustrations. These, done in watercolour, ink, and pencil, are reproductions of the figures from the works Mary copied out. A favourite in the sketchbook is the “Canadian Jumping Mouse”, a long-tailed rodent described in a piece in the Transactions of the Linnaean Society by Major General Thomas Davies in 1797. There are also many representations of molluscs (detailed enough to repulse Ruskin), mineral specimens, and occasional fold-out geological sections. As we flick through the book, we can see Mary experimenting with media and techniques — not only developing as an artist but also honing her skills as a scientific illustrator.

Original Illustration of the Canadian Jumping Mouse (Source: HathiTrust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044102883824&seq=114 (#114, p.84).)
Mary’s copied illustration of the Jumping Mouse

The skills and knowledge Mary developed in her natural history notebook were crucial to her later collaboration with William, as well as her own independent work as a draughtswoman before her marriage. In 1824, when Buckland presented the jaw of Megalosaurus to the Geological Society, it was “M. Morland” who provided the painstakingly detailed plates. Research has begun to uncover the extent of Mary’s work as a naturalist and illustrator, and now, with the help of the materials in the newly acquired archive, we can explore the origins of her skills. The archive is currently in the hands of a Paper Conservator, Anna Español Costa, to ensure the material is kept in the best condition for many years to come. Items from the archive will feature in the Breaking Ground exhibition, opening in October 2024.

Our fundraising campaign saw us receive generous support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Friends of the National Libraries, Headley Trust, and other private donors. Additionally, in late 2022, we launched the Buckland Papers Appeal, asking members of the public to help us meet our target to purchase the archive. Thank you to all our funders and members of the public who responded to our call. We could not have raised the money so quickly without your support and we are now thrilled to share the archive with you all.

The outside and inside of a box, showing its contents

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Boxes, Bags, and Bones

NO, THERE WEREN’T HARMONICAS IN THE JURASSIC!

Looking through the collections at OUMNH never gets boring, but sometimes a drawer will open up to reveal something even more eye-catching than the fossils usually found inside. Whilst working on the Museum’s Jurassic marine reptiles a few weeks ago, I came across something particularly surprising: a jewel-green box with a fantastic piece of art on the front. I was instantly intrigued and reminded of all the other times I had encountered a holder as fascinating as the specimen inside it.

Storage in museum collections is an ongoing pursuit of balance between ideal environmental conditions, specimen accessibility, and efficient use of space. This balance applies to all levels of storage: from building to room, cabinet to specimen tray. OUMNH’s Earth Collections are stored in conservation-grade, acid-free boxes or trays made of plastic or cardboard. These boxes are sometimes layered with low-density foam or ‘plastazote’ which can be carved to fit the specimen and keep it from being jostled or damaged. Holders with lids can also provide a micro-environment for specimens to help minimise their exposure to changes in humidity and temperature. The use of these standard materials not only helps protect specimens from degradation but can also deter pests from harbouring in collections spaces.

However, historical collections like those at OUMNH may retain holders that are not standard use. Sometimes, a clean and empty plastic Ferrero Rocher box is the perfect size for that small mammal skeleton that needs storing! Other times, an unusual holder might have been the only thing a field collector had on hand to transport a specimen to the Museum.

A harmonica box containing pliosaur teeth, a marine reptile that lived during the Jurassic (145.5 million – 201.6 million years ago).

One example of an unusual specimen holder is this ‘Echo Harp’ box by pre-eminent German harmonica manufacturer Hohner, likely from the 1960s. The box no longer holds a harmonica, but instead accompanies pieces of Jurassic pliosaur teeth from Weymouth, Dorset. Pliosaurs were a kind of carnivorous marine reptile related to plesiosaurs, with four flippers, and long tails and necks. If they hadn’t gone extinct in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, perhaps they would have come to appreciate the harmonica and its artistic packaging!

Aside from their artistic value, museums may sometimes retain unusual holders because they contain primary source information on the specimen. One such example is a ‘Bryant and May’s Patent Safety Matches’ box in our Earth collections, bearing a packaging design from the early 1900s. The box actually houses a chicken tarsometatarsus bone excavated from “High St. New Schools” in Oxfordshire and is accompanied by a label which describes the particular layer of gravel the specimen was found in — important information for any archaeological or palaeontological find. Although the specimen is stored alongside Pleistocene fossils (10,000 – 2.6 million years ago), chickens did not originate in the UK, so the bone is likely from much more recent times. Someone still must have thought it was important enough to keep in its own special holder!

A Tate and Lyle sugar bag containing a Jurassic specimen, with handwriting on the outside describing the stratigraphy the fossil was found in.

Similarly, this ‘Tate and Lyle Granulated Sugar’ paper bag features a handwritten original notation in blue pen on the outside. The bag originally contained a specimen found in a collection of Jurassic gastropods and bivalves from Somerset, with the handwriting describing the fossil’s stratigraphic information. The bag also features a recipe for cinnamon apples on the reverse, which we have yet to try!

A wooden box and the Quarternary fossils (up to 2.6 million years ago) it originally housed. An accompanying letter describes the delivery of the fossils to William Buckland, Oxford University’s First Reader in Geology.

In addition to primary source information, original holders may also provide specimens with provenance. This ovular wooden box filled with organic stuffing material originally contained Quarternary fossil specimens found in Peak’s Hole, Derbyshire. The Museum archive also holds a handwritten letter describing the specimens inside the package and how they were found. The letter dates to 1841 and is addressed to Oxford University’s first Reader in Geology, William Buckland.  The specimen holder forms part of a group of objects with such a strong interconnection, and such strong documentation, that retaining the box is a matter of course.

All in all, it’s great that we’ve come so far in the advancement of safe and stable housing for specimens. At the same time, it’s always fascinating to see what else has made its way into collections, just by nature of being able to hold things, either for a short time or a long one. Despite living in the Earth Collections – among fossils, rocks, and the geological past – these objects offer us a little bit of human history too.

By Brigit Tronrud, Earth Collections Assistant

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Beyond Buckland

DISCOVERING YORKSHIRE’S ANCIENT BEASTS

By Susan Newell

Susan Newell is a doctoral student researching the teaching collections of William Buckland, the first Professor of Geology at Oxford who taught from 1813 to 1849. She reminds us here about Buckland’s role 200 years ago in interpreting the important Pleistocene discoveries being celebrated this year, and the way that Mary Morland, a talented local naturalist, and many others, contributed to making this new knowledge.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of a great advance in our understanding of the geological past… a story which begins in the nineteenth century, with the discovery of a bone-filled cave in Kirkdale, Yorkshire. 

Uncovered by local quarrymen in 1821, the discovery of the Kirkdale cave and its contents of mysterious bone was the source of much intrigue. When news of the discovery reached William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University, he decided to travel up North to visit the site. However, by the time Buckland arrived at the cave, local collectors had scooped up most of its contents. Nonetheless, he was able to retrieve and examine some of the cave’s remaining material, which led him to an astonishing conclusion — Yorkshire must once have been home to hyaenas, elephants, hippopotamus and rhinoceros, and what was now known as the Kirkdale cave was once a hyaenas’ den.

W. B. Conybeare, lithograph, ‘The Hyaena’s Den at Kirkdale near Kirby Moorside in Yorkshire, discovered A.D. 1821’. Reproduced by kind permission of Christ Church, Oxford.
This light-hearted reconstruction of the hyaenas’ den shows Buckland illuminating the scene, in every sense. It is thought to be the first visual reconstruction of the pre-human past.

Central to Buckland’s theories were some small white balls that he had found amongst the debris in the cave. Buckland sent these balls to William Wollaston, a celebrated chemist based in London, for analysis.  He also asked Wollaston to visit the zoo at Exeter Exchange in London and show the balls to the hyaena’s keeper there.  Together with the results from Wollaston’s chemical analyses, the keeper confirmed Buckland’s hypothesis — the balls were droppings from animals very similar to modern hyaenas. Meanwhile, the anatomist William Clift was able to identify the bones from the Kirkdale cave as belonging to other extinct species related to those found living in tropical countries today. Buckland concluded that the cave must have been a den for ancient hyaenas, who would drag parts of the dead animals they had found (or killed) inside and, after feeding on them, leave piles of bones and droppings behind.

In order to strengthen his theory, Buckland discussed the behaviour of hyaenas in the wild with army officers connected to Britain’s colonial expansion in India. These officers also sent Buckland fresh specimens captured by local people. When a travelling menagerie visited Oxford in 1822, Buckland took the opportunity to experiment; feeding bones to a hyaena and noting that the teeth marks matched those on the fossilised bones from the cave.

Left: “Small white balls” of hyaena excrement. The left box probably contains samples collected from the hyaena in the travelling menagerie which visited Oxford, and the right contains fossilized samples collected by Buckland from Kirkdale Cave, now part of the Museum’s Collections. Right: Comparison of two shinbones – one fed to a hyaena by Buckland, and the other collected from Kirkdale cave. The similarity of the gnaw-marks suggest that hyaenas were once present in Kirkdale. On display in the Museum.

Buckland’s findings were something of a shock to his contemporaries. When lecturing, he employed several different methods to try and convince his audiences that his theories were true. This included presenting fossil specimens and bones from living species for comparison, and showing maps, diagrams and drawings. Mary Morland contributed some of these illustrations, including large drawings of living animals, and technical drawings of bones that were later engraved for use in Buckland’s publications. Mary’s Kirkdale drawings seem to have been the first that she produced for William before the couple married in 1825.

Fossil hyaena jaw in the Museum’s collection, possibly the one featured in the engraving alongside it. Engraving is by James Basire after a drawing by Mary Morland. Published in William Buckland’s article in the Royal Society’s journal (1822) on the Kirkdale cave discoveries. [1]

Buckland’s work on the Kirkdale cave was revolutionary, not least because he was the first to make a scientific study of a cache of bones of this type.  Although similar bones from ‘tropical’ species had previously been found in Northern Europe, people thought that they had been washed up by a catastrophic flood, believed by many to be the biblical Noah’s Flood.  Modern analysis has now allowed us to deduce that the bones date to an Interglacial period when Britain was joined to Europe and had a hot climate, about 120,000 years ago.  

Here at the Museum, Buckland’s collections and archives are as much of a treasure trove as the Kirkdale cave. It is through accessing these archives that we can learn about the surprising range of people who contributed to the emergence of new scientific knowledge from the Kirkland cave — quarrymen, collectors, zookeepers, chemists, anatomists, colonial officers in India, workers in India, and artists like Mary Morland. To find out more about the incredible legacy of the Kirkdale Cave, look out for ‘Kirkdale200 – Lost Beasts of the North’, a symposium organised by the Yorkshire Fossil Festival, 12th March 2022.

Mary Morland, watercolour and gouache, lecture illustration of a hippopotamus, signed ‘MM’.
Hippopotamus bones were found at Kirkdale cave in Yorkshire, but as there were no living hippos to be seen in Britain at the time, this drawing would have been a valuable teaching aid.

[1] William Buckland, ‘Account of an Assemblage of Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Bear, Tiger, and Hyaena, and Sixteen Other Animals; Discovered in a Cave at Kirkdale, Yorkshire, in the Year 1821: With a Comparative View of Five Similar Caverns in Various Parts of England, and others on the Continent’, Phil. Trans., 2 (1815-30), 165-167.