Elsa Panciroli, Palaeontology PhD candidate, at work on the Isle of Skye. Photo credit: Elsa Panciroli.

Mesozoic mammal palaeontology is in the middle of a revolution. Since the first mammals and their closest mammal-like relatives were discovered in the early 1800s, most of the fossil record for these earliest ancestors of ours were fragments of jaw and isolated teeth, the size of rice grains. In the last fifteen years however, an increasing number of more complete skeletons have been found in China, radically changing our understanding of the first mammals. It turns out they were more diverse and ecologically specialised than anyone previously suspected.

Now we have new skeletons, it is more important than ever to pull together and sort through the historical fossil finds and descriptions. This means tracking down old and often obscure scientific papers. That’s how I discovered BHL.

My name is Elsa, and I’m in the third year of my PhD on the origin and evolution of mammals, at the University of Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland. My work centres on the spectacular fossils found on the Isle of Skye; a beautiful island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. The Middle Jurassic limestones of Skye are yielding the best Mesozoic aged mammal fossils found in the UK, and arguably among the best in the world.

The mammal fossils of Skye come from similar aged rocks to the very first Mesozoic mammal fossils ever described. In 1824, The Reverend William Buckland not only introduced the Victorian world to the meat-eating dinosaur Megalosaurus, but also a sturdy little mammal jaw, complete with little pointed teeth. This came to be called Phascolotherium. These fossils were recovered from the Stonesfield Slate of Oxfordshire. The rocks are Bathonian in age, a Jurassic time period spanning 168-166 million years ago.

Upper jaw and teeth of Megalosaurus. Buckland, William. Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield. Transactions of the Geological Society ser. 2, v. 1: 390-396. Digitized by California Academy of Sciences. http://s.si.edu/2y9Eb7M.

Since Buckland’s initial description, the Bathonian rocks of the UK have been the most productive Mesozoic mammal strata. Many new species and genera have been identified from sites such as Kirtlington in Oxfordshire, and Watton Cliff in Dorset. In order to understand the relationships between the mammals we are now finding on Skye, and previous fossil finds, I’ve had to scour old journal articles and papers.

Thanks to the BHL, I’ve been able to read the original descriptions by William Buckland and Richard Owen, and those by the many great palaeontologists who followed them. To begin with, I had relied on sending hopeful emails to established colleagues to try and beg obscure old scientific papers from them. I came across BHL a few months into the first year of my PhD, via desperate searching for old articles online. To my delight, many of the old journals I needed were on their website. Once I found what I wanted, it was easy to select the relevant pages and generate a PDF, which BHL emailed to me within minutes. This service has to be one of the best things BHL offers.

From Richard Owen’s On the Jaws of Thylacotherium prevostii (Valenciennes) from Stonesfield (1838), to Clemens and Mills Review of Peramus tenuirostrus Owen (Eupantotheria, Mammalia) (1971), I’ve been able to track down papers unavailable elsewhere. These may be old, but without them I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the full scientific history of the specimens we are working on today, nor check on the references of previous authors who cited them.

Panciroli prospecting for Jurassic fossils in Northern Skye. Photo credit: Elsa Panciroli/Davide Foffa.

Some of the papers BHL have been able to provide have had even more direct bearing on my own publications. They’ve also proven a test of BHL’s staff helpfulness – a test they passed with flying colours.

Many of the animals I study were not yet true-mammals; lacking the distinguishing skeletal characteristics that define this group, such as a dentary-squamosal jaw joint. They are instead, the closest relatives, referred to as mammaliaforms and mammaliamorphs. One such group are the Tritylodontidae. These animals would have looked a lot like mammals at first glance, but they are only a close-sister group. They split off from the mammals and charted their own course through evolutionary history, developing grinding teeth for eating vegetation, and growing much larger than their contemporaneous mammal cousins.

The first tritylodontid described was from the Jurassic of England, a creature called Stereognathus ooliticus. In 1857, Sir Richard Owen figured it in one of his papers, from the type specimen which comprises three molar teeth in a piece of upper jaw. My colleagues and I were looking at the related Stereognathus species, S.hebridicus from Skye. Our goal was to determine if the Scottish species was truly different, or whether all of these fossils were actually from the same original English species. To make this comparison we not only had to look at the original fossil, but track down a high quality copy of Richard Owen’s figure from 1857. Online we found plenty of copies of it, but none in the high resolution necessary.

Stereognathus ooliticus. Owen, Richard. 1857. On the affinity of Stereognathus ooliticus (Charlesworth) a mammal from the Oolitic slate of Stonesfield. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 13:1–11. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2yeJQel.

I contacted the BHL by email. They had the journal containing Owen’s description. I visited one of their Member libraries at the Natural History Museum in London, where a helpful staff member found the journal and showed me how to use the scanner. When this proved not to yield a high-enough resolution image for my purposes, she took me behind the scenes and we scanned the figures on another, more powerful scanner in the back-office. I was so grateful!

Thanks to the images I got that day, my co-authors and I were able to finish our publication: A reassessment of the postcanine dentition and systematics of the tritylodontid Stereognathus (Cynodontia, Tritylodontidae, Mammaliamorpha), from the Middle Jurassic of the United Kingdom (See Figure 3). We saw how the fossil drawn by Owen had been worn and damaged over the years by comparing this image to the existing specimen. The damage has an impact on how we carry out taxonomic comparisons between new material found, and the old type specimens. This knowledge wouldn’t have been available without BHL’s resources and assistance.

I now use BHL at least every month or two. Instead of a last resort, I consider it one of my first stops in any search for historical publications. In an age when researchers increasingly expect to be able to access resources online, it provides an amazing resource. The fact that this resource is open access is just amazing. It is only right that everyone should be able to appreciate our shared biodiversity heritage: BHL is helping make that a reality.

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This post may contain the personal opinions of BHL users or affiliated staff and does not necessarily represent the official Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) position on these matters.

World’s first large mounted Camptosaurus skeleton at the National Museum of Natural History. Proceedings of the United States National Museum. v. 41 (1912). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29866417.

In 1911, the Smithsonian Institution debuted the world’s first large mounted Camptosaurus skeleton at its newly-opened Natural History building. The display featured two specimens erected side-by-side, one identified as Camptosaurus nanus and the other as Camptosaurus browni.

Camptosaurus, whose name means “flexible lizard,” was a plant-eating, beaked dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic period. Both Smithsonian specimens were uncovered at a quarry near Como Bluff, Wyoming. The smaller of the specimens, dubbed C. nanus, was collected in 1882 by William Reed as part of a collecting expedition funded by the United States Geological Survey and under the technical direction of famous paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh.

Marsh is well-renowned for his many contributions to the field of paleontology, which include discovering a plethora of fossil animals and naming a multitude of dinosaur genera including Camptosaurus. He is also notoriously remembered for his longstanding conflict with fellow paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope – a conflict that came to be known as the Bone Wars. The intense rivalry between the two men spanned decades as each undermined, ridiculed, and even sabotaged the work of the other in a struggle for scientific dominance.

The C. nanus fossil was originally accessioned into the collection of the Yale Peabody Natural History Museum, where Marsh was the Curator of Paleontology, until, after Marsh’s death in 1899, it was transferred to the Smithsonian in compliance with legislation regarding objects collected for, or whose collection was funded by, the US government. The fossil, which was cataloged as USNM 2210, was then prepared and mounted by Norman H. Boss in 1911 alongside the larger C. browni specimen. The mounts are detailed in a 1912 publication by Charles W. Gilmore. Interestingly, the specimens are now known to represent the juvenile (previously C. nanus) and mature (previously C. browni) stages of a single species, C. disbar.

C. nanus, as mounted at the National Museum of Natural History. Proceedings of the United States National Museum. v. 41 (1912). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29866427.

Between 2004 and 2008, the Camptosaurus fossils were taken off display to allow for repairs and the creation of casts that may be re-exhibited with the reopening of the Smithsonian’s Deep Time Hall in 2019. The authentic fossils will be placed in the museum’s collections for research and conservation reasons.

The fascinating history of USNM 2210’s journey from rock to museum is detailed by National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) volunteer Mark Lay in the article A Brief History of Camptosaurus, U.S. National Museum Specimen 2210.

Mark Lay with Camptosaurus cast at the National Museum of Natural History.

Trained as a physicist and nuclear engineer, Mark began volunteering in the Vertebrate Paleontology Preparation Lab at NMNH in 2007 after retirement provided him more time to pursue personal interests like paleontology.

Mark’s early volunteer activities in the Preparation Lab involved making molds and casts, primarily of USNM 2210. Since then, after moving to work with Department of Paleobiology Information Officer Tom Jorstad, he has transitioned to providing research support for requests from the public and outside researchers, as well as organizing and developing “who, what, when, where” metadata for paleontology-related photographic images in both Department and Smithsonian Institution Archives files. He also writes articles on various aspects of the Department’s history and currently is researching the first 100 years of vertebrate fossil preparation in the Smithsonian.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library has proven to be an important resource for Mark’s research, providing information both about items in the collection and historical documents regarding the history of the NMNH and other natural history museums around the US.

“I am a big fan of BHL,” lauds Mark, who uses BHL up to 4-5 times a week. “I am able to spend only roughly one day per week in the NMNH. This means I can spend only a limited amount of time examining actual hard copy documents in the museum libraries. The fact that I can access many of the same documents via BHL means that I can also work from home – greatly increasing the amount of time that I can devote to my volunteer research. In addition, BHL’s inclusion of documents from other museums and universities enables me to access documents that otherwise would be extremely difficult for me to obtain. BHL doesn’t have everything I want, but I would be hard-pressed to do my research without it.”

This image, SIA 2011-1418, shows USNM Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Charles Gilmore’s camp site near North Horn Mountain, Utah during his 1937 expedition. It appears as Figure 1 in Gilmore’s 1938 publication, “Fossil Hunting in Utah and Arizona”, Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1937, pp 1-4, available in BHL here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40734134 (Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries).

Currently, Mark is working on a series of glass lantern slides dating from the mid-1890s through the late 1930s, now being digitized by the Archives and possessing limited metadata. BHL has been a valuable resource for obtaining more information about the slides.

“Some of these slide images were originally used in various Smithsonian publications from that era, making positive identification of the people, fossil localities, and dates much easier,” explains Mark. “More challenging have been the slides sent to the Smithsonian from a variety of museums around the U.S. So, our identification process has first concentrated on determining an initial ‘guesstimate’ of the curator, specimen, or collecting locality involved, then backtracking through relevant Smithsonian publications to see if the image appears. If not, we backtrack our guesstimate to publications from other ‘most likely’ museums. If all that fails, we dig deeper into the view or geology portrayed to see if we can find something similar and broaden the search to include relevant publications from other sources. Having so many of the Smithsonian and other museum publications from that time period in BHL has greatly sped up this process.”

Before using BHL, Mark scoured the physical copies of these publications to find this information – a time consuming and sometimes frustrating process. This all changed when Martha Rosen, a librarian in the NMNH Smithsonian Libraries, introduced him to BHL.

“I discovered BHL 5 or 6 years ago when I was sitting in the museum reference collection reading through some old United States National Museum annual reports, and complaining that my eyes were getting ready to drop out from going through so much text all at once,” recalls Mark. “Martha mentioned that I could get the documents on-line and gave me the BHL link. I downloaded a searchable PDF of the documents and went through them that evening, actually finding relevant information faster than I could with the hard copy.”

This image, SIA 2011-1429, shows Quarry 6 in the Freezeout Mountains of Wyoming, as worked by the Field Columbian Museum expedition of 1899. It was used as Plate XXX in the Field Columbian Reports, Volume 1, October 1899, included in the Annual Report of the Director to the Board of Trustees for the Years 1894-1900, available in BHL here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/45723188 (Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries).

Mark’s volunteer work with the Smithsonian has allowed him to pursue his passions, enhance collection information, and share wonderful insights into the history of the museum and fossil preparation.

“Paleontology has been a long-standing interest,” Mark asserts. “To me, there is a fascination with bringing a fossil out of the rock encasing it and learning more about it. My interest in paleontological history is more recent, but the research has turned out to be no less rewarding.”

Mark’s articles, published through the Department of Paleobiology’s website, provide him a means to share the wonderful knowledge and history he is uncovering. For instance, Mark’s Camptosaurus article highlights the sometimes tangled path of a fossil from field to museum and provides insight into the changing philosophy of fossil preparation.

As Mark explains in his article, in the early 1900s, “preparators mounted a specimen and expected it to stay mounted forever – no provision was made for repair or reconstruction.” So when preparing USNM 2210 back in 1911, “heavy copper wire and iron strapping were used as a support armature, with thinner copper wire used to secure the manus and pes elements. In general, these supports have held up well, with only slight corrosion damage, but some of the bolts and rivets securing the skeleton were drilled through real bone and secured with glue. As we have dismantled the specimen, this mounting technique has occasionally necessitated our cracking bones in order to remove them from the armature, and then making appropriate repairs.”

Modern techniques accommodate the possible future need to dismantle specimens and allow for a more-realistic presentation of specimens. “The hard plaster we have used for the casts allows for support connections to be made through the simulated bone, reducing the amount of armature seen by the public and providing a more natural looking display. The philosophy is to make all changes reversible, while also ensuring repairs are both state of the art and long lasting,” explains Mark in his article.

We’re excited to see the ways that BHL has helped support Mark’s valuable work at the Smithsonian. It’s a great example of one of the many ways that BHL inspires discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.

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This post may contain the personal opinions of BHL users or affiliated staff and does not necessarily represent the official Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) position on these matters.

We hope you’ve been enjoying the fossil-mania this week with Fossil Stories! We’ve been exploring the fascinating history of paleontology, learning some great fossil facts, and hearing from experts (via a series of live webcasts) about current fossil research.

Our posts have demonstrated the important role that natural history publications have played in the history of paleontology. These works disseminated new research and ideas, documented the evolution of human knowledge about fossils and their origins, and recorded the first scientific descriptions of many ancient creatures.

But this literature is important not just for the historical information it provides. It is also highly relevant to modern paleontological research.

“Traditional ways of knowing about the fossil record are still relevant for modern questions in paleontology because specimens matter,” explains Dr. Nicholas D. Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “Many important fossils were intially described and published in monographic, folio formats, and in many cases, those descriptions can be still be used 100-150 years later. I use them all the time.”

And indeed he does. During a recent trip to Argentina, Dr. Pyenson was able to compare specimens in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales with illustrations of those specimens in BHL alongside 3D scans of the related cetacean.

Comparing specimens to digitized literature and 3D scans. Dr. Nicholas D. Pyenson conducting research at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. Photo by Nicholas D. Pyenson, via Twitter: https://twitter.com/PyensonLab/status/647111438222389248.

The importance of historic literature to modern fossil research is echoed by those in the field of paleobotany as well.

“Just as in research on living plant and animal biodiversity, research on the fossil record of plants and animals depends crucially on the published literature,” emphasizes Dr. Patrick Herendeen, Director of Systematics and Evolutionary Biology at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “Plant systematics literature goes back hundreds of years, and having access to this literature is essential for ongoing research in plant taxonomy and systematics. This is equally true for paleobotany.”

Knowing that historic literature is so important to modern paleontological work, we asked paleontologists at several BHL partner institutions to share some of their favorite historic publications with us. We think the results constitute a pretty awesome Recommended Reading List for Paleontology Enthusiasts!

Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues 
Chair, Department of Paleobiology. Curator of Fossil Vertebrates.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

“Not surprisingly, my favorite early book on paleontology is Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes by G. Cuvier (first published in 1812, with three later editions). Not only did it found the scientific study of fossil vertebrates but it is written in a clear yet elegant style but that makes it a pleasure to read. Cuvier did not just describe fossils but tried to interpret their anatomy in functional terms. As a foundational work in the field, it will always be relevant to researchers interested in the fossil record of backboned animals.”

Cuvier, Georges. Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes. v. 3 (1812). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40078532. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Dr. Maria A. Gandolfo 
Senior Researcher, L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Plant Biology Section 
School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University

Dr. Gandolfo’s favorite early paleobotany book is Ancient Plants, written by Mary C. Stopes in 1910. When asked why it is her favorite, Dr. Gandolfo referred to a quote from the book: “The lore of the plants which have successively clothed this ancient earth during the thousands of centuries before men appeared is generally ignored or tossed on one side with a contemptuous comment on the dullness and ‘dryness’ of fossil botany.” According to Dr. Gandolfo, “This book was written in 1910 and even after 105 years of incredible advances in the field of Paleobotany, this sentence still reflects what people feels about Paleobotany.”

Dr. Peter J. Makovicky
Department Chair and Associate Curator, Department of Geology
The Field Museum

The Ceratopsia are a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived during the Cretaceous Period. They include such iconic genera as Triceratops and Montanoceratops. The name Ceratopsia was coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1890, and in 1907 he, along with John B. Hatcher and Richard S. Lull, published a monograph on the group, entitled The Ceratopsia. According to Dr. Makovicky, this work is one of his favorites and a classic amongst the pre-1923 published materials.

The Ceratopsia. 1907. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39875988. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Dr. William A. DiMichele 
Research Paleontologist and Curator 
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Dr. DiMichele’s favorite historic paleontology work is Description of the Coal Flora of the Carboniferous Formation in Pennsylvania and Throughout the United States, by Leo Lesquereux (1879-80). According to Dr. DiMichele, “This is the foundational book/atlas on American Carboniferous (coal age) floras and contains detailed descriptions and illustrations of many of the species that occur commonly in coal fields of the eastern and midwestern US. Many of the species that occur in the rocks I study were first described in this set of volumes, so the books remain a primary source of information to which I turn regularly.”

Lesquereux, Leo. Description of the coal flora of the Carboniferous formation in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States. Atlas (1879). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46854192. Digitized by Wellesley College Library.

Dr. Karl J. Niklas 
The Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology 
Cornell University

Dr. Niklas’ favorite historic paleontological work is The Origin of a Land Flora (1908) written by F. O. Bower. According to Dr. Niklas, “This book presents the first conceptualization of the evolution of ‘The Alternation of Generations’ in the land plants. I have worked on the evolution of plant body plans and the evolution of plant life cycles,” thus making this work particularly relevant to Dr. Niklas’ research.

Bower, F.O. The Origin of Land Flora. (1908). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1312200. Digitized by the MBLWHOI Library.

Dr. Nicholas D. Pyenson
Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Dr. Pyenson’s favorite historic paleontology book is Ostéographie des cétacés vivants et fossiles (1868-79), by Pierre Joseph Beneden and Paul Gervais. “This work showcased specimens and species that no one had really seen outside of the areas where the specimens were collected,” explains Dr. Pyenson. “It’s a catalog of the world’s whales, and the authors didn’t discriminate between fossil and modern species. It’s cool that these were integrated together into one work this early on, before it was fashionable to do so.”

Modern whale skulls alongside fossil skulls. “You can tell which are the fossil skulls by the condition of the specimens,” explains Dr. Pyenson. Ostéographie des cétacés vivants et fossiles. (1869-79). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41066967. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Thanks to all of our experts for sharing their favorite historic publications with us! We hope you’ve enjoyed our series of blog posts this week highlighting key works in the history of paleontology. Can’t get enough of the fossil publications? Then check out other great works in the BHL Fossil Stories digital book collection.

On October 9, we challenged Smithsonian Transcription volunteers to transcribe the field notes of Ladd, Ward, and G. Arthur Cooper. See the details of the challenge here.

It took exactly three and a half days for volunteers to completely transcribe 9 sets of field notes totaling 252 pages. An average of 14 people contributed to each project. The range? 35 people co-opted our longest Cooper journal, while only 3 tackled his shortest 6 page journal.

Here’s what happened in the numbers:

• 12 total projects completed in those days, including our 9 #FossilFossick Projects! 
• 30 New volunteers! 
• 252 pages completed – and 712 Pages total over the challenge dates! 
• 3.5 Days from launch to completely transcribe and review the #FossilFossick field notes! 
• Visits from 48 countries including Germany, Ecuador, Turkey, India, and New Zealand 

Sharing the Challenge

Through 114 #FossilFossick Tweets and other communication, the #FossilFossick challenge gathered 192.7k impressions. The challenge announcement e-mail was opened by 1,895 people, who in total clicked on links 177 times. The update campaign e-mail sent 3 days later, pushing us through the last 29 pages, was opened by 1,121 people and resulted in 101 link clicks.

Surfacing Connections

We also asked volunteers to help us track correspondents, specimens, and locations. This part of the challenge is on-going! You can still help by reading the completed field notes (perhaps by downloading the PDF) and entering details in this Google Spreadsheet: http://bit.ly/FossilFossick

Finds From #FossilFossick Hunters

What did volunteers find interesting about this challenge? Handwriting to buddies to technology and the real personalities behind scientific field work. First, our volunteers were more than amused by Harry Ladd’s adventures and his playful personality, as well as his colorful pals.

Aeneid allusion alert! Evidently, Willy is Ladd’s Patroclus! @TranscribeSI #FossilFossick https://t.co/6k1wF8S4hu pic.twitter.com/hUjDk5E4nb

— Witchy Meg (@meg_shuler) October 10, 2015

Other volunteers tried to determine whether Ward took a street car, golf cart, or automobile from Alexandria to Mount Vernon.

.@TranscribeSI Ward misses his “electric car” & has 2 walk. Wonder if its an actual car or a trolley https://t.co/1QtyvuViXA #fossilfossick

— Siobhan (@SiobhanLeachman) October 11, 2015

Still others shared information to help one another tackle the challenge – great collaboration even from the start of the event!

To anyone who’s into #FossilFossick project (https://t.co/HL1hUdIhpH), here’s a handy fossil search db http://t.co/byhnFhfuj5 #volunpeers

— Loukritia (@loukritia_sin) October 10, 2015

What’s Next?

A total success deserves a totally fantastic reward: be sure to tune into the behind-the-scenes tour of Smithsonian fossil collections with Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, via the BHL Periscope on October 26 as a reward for the successful completion of the challenge. More details to come on Twitter and Facebook.

You can explore the field notes in BHL:

• Harry S. Ladd
• Lester F. Ward
• G. Arthur Cooper

You can also read all of the completed #FossilFossick projects by visiting the project pages with these links and downloading the PDFs:

• Harry S. Ladd – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7811
• Harry S. Ladd – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7812
• Lester F. Ward – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7810
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7804
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7805
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7806
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7807
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7808
• G. Arthur Cooper – https://transcription.si.edu/project/7809

Phytology is an historic term, not widely used today, for the study of plants. Antediluvian was a term much used by early paleontologists to describe the “time before the great Biblical flood.” These two terms are necessary to understand the title of an important work in paleobotany: Antediluvian Phytology (1838), by Edmund Tyrell Artis.

The formal study of paleobotany has roots in 1828, when Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, known as the Father of Paleobotany, published Histoire des végétaux fossiles. A decade after this publication, Artis’ work was published. It was remarkable for including some the best paleobotanical illustrations published up to that time, describing many new-to-science species, and interpreting fossils through the lens of the individual that actually collected the fossils: Artis himself. At the time, many paleontologists obtained fossils from collectors, but did not collect themselves. Understanding the context in which a fossil is found, and the surrounding environment, can have important implications in the analysis and interpretation of the specimen.

Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antediluvian Phytology. 1838. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39307886. Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences.

These accomplishments are even more remarkable considering the humble origins of Artis himself, which also contributes to much of the mystery surrounding him and his work.

Artis was the son of a carpenter, born in 1789 in the small village of Sweffling in Suffolk, England. After moving to London to work in the wine trade with his uncle, he opened a confectionary shop, where his work caught the eye of the Earl Fitzwilliam, who asked Milton to join his staff at Milton Hall near Castor. Artis proved very adept, and was promoted to House Steward within three years.

Artis often accompanied the Fitzwilliams on their visits to the other family property, Wentworth Woodhouse in south Yorkshire. The region boasted some of the most important coal mines in England, and Artis soon began collecting plant fossils from the area. He amassed a collection of between 1,000-1,500 plant fossils, some of which he described in his only publication, Antediluvian Phytology. The work included 24 illustrations, some based on his own paintings and the rest the work of leading natural history illustrator John Curtis.

Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antediluvian Phytology. 1838. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39307868. Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences.

Artis and his publication are something of a mystery. For instance, it’s unclear who paid for the publication of his work. There’s no evidence of pre-subscriptions that could have funded the work, or that Fitzwilliam contributed funds to it. Artis himself is not likely to have been able to afford such a venture. Furthermore, Artis was evidently familiar with the relevant natural history literature of the day, but how he gained access to it is alsoa mystery. Artis also apparently had influential friends. He claimed to have met Georges Cuvier, and William Buckland sponsored Artis to become a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1824. How he met Buckland, or when he would have had occasion to meet Cuvier, are unknown.

Artis would later find an interest in archeology, becoming famous for his excavations of the Roman remains near Milton Hall. In 1847, he fell ill, possibly due to exposure to a harsh winter while excavating ruins in Northamptonshire. He died on Christmas Eve, 1847.

Artis, Edmund Tyrell. Antediluvian Phytology. 1838. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39307762. Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences.

Although much mystery still surrounds this enigmatic man, his contributions to the field of paleobotany are forever immortalized through his Antediluvian Phytology.

Fossil Stories

Stay tuned all week for more great fossil fun with our #FossilStories campaign, including:

• Tweets and Facebook Posts
• Blog Posts highlighting milestones and key publications in the history of fossil research
• A Flickr Collection with hundreds of historic fossil illustrations
• A Pinterest Collection featuring a selection of our favorite fossil illustrations
• A BHL Collection containing seminal publications in the history of paleontology
• A series of live webcasts at BHL partner institutions
• A citizen science challenge in collaboration with The Field Book Project, the Smithsonian Transcription Center, and Smithsonian Institution Archives

When most people think about fossils, they generally think of body fossils, which are fossilized remains of parts of an organism’s body. But there is another type of fossil: trace fossils. Trace fossils are geological records of biological activity, and they provide important insight into an animal’s behavior.

One important trace fossil, which provides information about an animal’s diet, is the coprolite. That’s a fancy way of saying fossilized feces.

When coprolites were first discovered, they were identified as fossilized fir tree cones or bezoar stones. Bezoar stones were undigested masses found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, and were once believed to have magical properties, capable of neutralizing any poison. As an interesting aside, this claim was put to the test by surgeon Ambroise Paré in 1575. A cook caught stealing was sentenced to death by hanging, but at Paré’s request, agreed to be poisoned instead and fed a bezoar in the hopes that it would prove to be an antidote. The cook died in agony seven hours later.

Coprolites. Buckland, William. Transactions of the Geological Society of London. ser. 2, v. 3 (1835).  http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36239898. Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences.

William Buckland, famous for describing and validly naming the first dinosaur genus, Megalosaurus, had a theory about coprolites. He first became interested while studying cave deposits at Kirkdale. He suspected that the deposits that he found were actually preserved carnivore droppings, and even compared them with spotted hyena droppings in an attempt to prove his hypothesis.

In the mid-1820s, Buckland received the evidence he needed. Famous fossil-hunter Mary Anning provided Buckland with coprolites she discovered in the cliffs near her home in Lyme Regis, England. Anning’s attention was drawn to these objects, as she usually discovered them within the ribs or near the pelvis of the ichthyosaur fossils she was discovering. She also noticed that, when the coprolites were broken open, they sometimes contained fossilized fish bones, scales, and the bones of smaller ichthyosaurs. Mary herself believed them to be fossilized feces.

Coprolites containing scales of fishes and undigested bones. Buckland, William. Transactions of the Geological Society of London. ser. 2, v. 3 (1835). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36239900. Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences.

Buckland published his theory about the true nature of these fossils, and provided the name coprolite, in a paper which he read before the Geological Society of London in 1829 and was later published in the Society’s Transactions in 1835. Buckland recognized Mary Anning by name, giving her credit for her discoveries and deductions.

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Humans have been encountering the fossilized remains of dinosaurs for millennia. The myth of the dragon, for instance, may be based on discoveries of dinosaur fossils. As an example, Chinese historian, Chang Qu mislabeled such a fossil as a dragon in the 4th century B.C.E.

The concept of dinosaurs as a group, however, occurred much more recently…in the nineteenth century, in fact.

The first published description of what is now known to be a dinosaur bone (but was thought to be the thighbone of a giant human at the time) occurred in the seventeenth century. The early nineteenth century saw the first scientifically named dinosaurs, including Megalosaurus and Iguanodon. But the relationship between these extinct giants – as dinosaurs – was not uncovered until the 1840s.

Iguanodon. Owen, Richard. History of British Fossil Reptiles. (1849-84). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31985623. Digitized by: Missouri Botanical Garden.

English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen conducted extensive research on fossils during his career. He is perhaps most famous for being the first person to introduce the concept of dinosaurs as a group.

The name Dinosauria is first published in Owen’s Report on British Fossil Reptiles, which was published in 1842 as part of the Report from the 11th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  Owen used three genera to define his dinosaurs: the carnivorous Megalosaurus, the herbivorous Iguanodon, and armored Hylaeosaurus.

Megalosaurus. Owen, Richard. History of British Fossil Reptiles. (1849-84). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31985705. Digitized by: Missouri Botanical Garden.

Owen was fascinated by the specimens his peers had discovered. He examined William Buckland’s Megalosaurus specimens at Oxford and Gideon Mantell’s Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus specimens housed in the British Museum. From these, and examinations of other collections (most notably a sacrum from an Iguanodon in the collection of fossil collector William Devonshire Saull that likely first inspired Owen’s discovery), Owen determined that these three animals shared unique anatomical features that united them together while also separating them from other known groups. It was the fusion of five vertebrae at the base of the spine, observed in some of the Megalosaurus and Iguanodon fossils that Owen consulted and inferred in the Hylaeosaurus fragments – a feature unknown in other reptiles – that fueled Owen’s confidence in his new group.

Hylaeosaurus. Owen, Richard. History of British Fossil Reptiles. (1849-84). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31984756. Digitized by: Missouri Botanical Garden.

The realization of this relationship among these specimens was Owen’s chief contribution to the field of Dinosaur research. It was a connection other paleontologists of the time had not uncovered. Thus, on the basis of this research and with the publication of his report in 1842, Richard Owen erected the clade Dinosauria and kindled a human love affair with dinosaurs that lasts to this day.

Owen’s chief memoirs, particularly those relating to the relationship between reptiles and extinct forms, were republished as a connected series in his History of British Fossil Reptiles (4 vols. London 1849–1884).

Fossil Stories

Stay tuned all week for more great fossil fun with our #FossilStories campaign, including:

• Tweets and Facebook Posts
• Blog Posts highlighting milestones and key publications in the history of fossil research
• A Flickr Collection with hundreds of historic fossil illustrations
• A Pinterest Collection featuring a selection of our favorite fossil illustrations
• A BHL Collection containing seminal publications in the history of paleontology
• A series of live webcasts at BHL partner institutions
• A citizen science challenge in collaboration with The Field Book Project, the Smithsonian Transcription Center, and Smithsonian Institution Archives