All posts by michelle.underhill

When the fossils of extinct species were first discovered, they were often misidentified. Case in point: Ichthyosaurs. The first probable illustrations of ichthyosaur fossils were published by Edward Lhuyd in his Lithophylacii Brittannici Ichnographia, 1699. He attributed the fossils to fish. In 1708, Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer attributed two ichthyosaur vertebrae to a man who drowned during the Biblical flood. In 1783, an ichthyosaur jaw with teeth was exhibited by the Society for Promoting Natural History as those of a crocodilian.

If you’ve seen Jurassic World (or even just the trailers), then you’re familiar with Mosasaurus.

Most people today are at least somewhat familiar with the order of extinct marine reptiles known as Plesiosauria, thanks to the legend of the Loch Ness monster, which is often described as resembling a plesiosaur. Indeed, some argue that Nessie may in fact be a surviving member of this order. Scientists, however, reject this suggestion, if for no other reason that the Loch Ness lake formed a mere 10,000 years ago, while the fossil record indicates that plesiosaurs went extinct over 66 million years ago. And yet, even if plesiosaurs can’t account for the Loch Ness legend, the story of their discovery is still captivating. Plesiosaurs are among the first extinct fossil reptiles to be recognized as such.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s FossiLab is a busy place, responsible for preparing newly-collected fossils for Smithsonian’s scientists and maintaining the fossils in the Smithsonian’s collection. Visitors to the museum can actually watch staff and volunteers at work in the FossiLab, which is located within the Last American Dinosaurs Exhibition. One of the projects in the FossiLab is the conservation and rehousing of specimens from the Museum’s fossil marine mammal collection. The specimens range from individual teeth to skulls, jaws and more-or-less complete skeletons comprised of both intact and fragmentary bones.

By the seventeenth century, it was still widely believed that species could not become extinct, and there were still many hypotheses about the origin of fossils. One widely-held belief, extending back to Aristotle’s time, was that fossils were formed by the Earth itself, and that some “extraordinary Plastick virtue” could create stones that resembled, but were not, living organisms. But also during the seventeenth century, some critical advances in the world of science were having an impact on fossil research. Robert Hooke was born at Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, in 1635. Though of humble origins, he eventually studied at Oxford and impressed many of England’s leading scientists with his ability to design experiments and build equipment.

During the 1990-91 austral summer, geologist David Elliot came across fossil bones on Mount Kirkpatrick in the Beardmore Glacier region of the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica at an altitude of ~4,000 m (13,000 ft) high and about 640 km (400 mi) from the South Pole. The team notified paleontologist Bill Hammer, who then excavated the fossil-bearing rock over a three week period. The excavated skeleton was eventually given the name Cryolophosaurus ellioti in an 1994 article in Science by Hammer and paleontologist William J. Hickerson.

An international ensemble of biodiversity-minded professionals recently gathered in Nairobi, Kenya for two weeks of trainings and conferences. From 24-26 September, 2015, fifteen representatives from eleven institutions throughout South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda attended a BHL Africa training workshop at the National Museums of Kenya. Following the workshop, 28 September – 1 October, 2015, the TDWG Annual Conference was held at the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club in Nairobi. The BHL Africa Workshop was an opportunity to provide training and help build capacity amongst the current signatories of the BHL Africa MOU.