DIPPY RETURNS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM UK

This sexy monkey with the long neck lit in soft purple and blue is Dippy the Dinosaur.

Dippy was the first Diplodocus to ever go on display when it was gifted to the Natural History Museum over 100 years ago. It quickly became a star, capturing hearts and imaginations. 

In 1905 a cast of a Diplodocus skeleton was donated to the Museum by the wealthy businessman Andrew Carnegie, based on the original specimen in the Carnegie Museum in the USA.

King Edward VII had requested a copy of the newly discovered dinosaur after seeing a picture of it in Carnegie's Scottish castle. From 1979 to early 2017 the cast - known affectionately as Dippy - was on display in the Museum's Hintze Hall.

In 1993, Dippy's tail was lifted from the ground after research revealed that Diplodocus tails would have been raised high to balance the neck.

Every two years or so, Museum experts used specialist equipment to clean the 292 bones that makeup Dippy. It takes two staff members two days to clean the cast and make sure it is maintained for future generations to enjoy. 

Dippy left the Museum in 2017 to complete a whirlwind tour of the UK. Throughout his journey, Dippy witnessed the changing state of nature and how the UK's biodiversity is in sharp decline. The famous cast is now back visiting the Museum until Christmas 2022.

Diplodocus had a long neck that it would have used to reach high and low vegetation and to drink water. There has been some debate over how such a long neck would have been held.

Scientists now think that ligaments running from the hip to the back of the neck would have allowed Diplodocus to hold its neck in a horizontal position without using muscles. The vertebrae (back bones) are split down the middle and this space could have held ligaments like these. Diplodocus may have had narrow, pointed bony spines lining its back.

HELIANTHASTER / ASTEROIDEA

Exceptional fossil starfish Helianthaster preserved in minute detail in pyrite from the Devonian of Bundenbach, Germany.

Helianthaster rhenanus was first described in 1862 by Roemer, based on fossils found in the Bundenbach area in Germany, dating back to the lower Devonian. 

Helianthaster was variously attributed to Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea or to another group (Auluroidea ), but only recently this echinoderm and its close relatives (Helianthasteridae ) have been attributed with some certainty to Asteroidea (Blake, 2009). 

Other very similar starfish were the North Americans Arkonaster (Middle Devonian) and Lepidasterella ( Carboniferousmedium), the latter with 24 arms.

This animal, similar to modern starfish, had a diameter that could exceed 15 centimetres with extended arms. Helianthaster had 14 - 16 arms, elongated and thin, with an aboral surface with granular ossifications. The mouth was wide and composed of rather large oral plates; there were thorns on the adambulacrali, while the central disc was composed of small ossicles.

A study of the type specimen was examined with the use of X- rays. The result was images that seem to confirm the presence of large semicircular muscle flanges along the middle of the arms (Südkamp, ​​2011).

The second image you see here is a specimen from the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the oldest museum in the Netherlands established in 1778. 

We have a cloth merchant turned banker to thank for both the building and this specimen. And, in a way, the beginnings of nomenclature. Pieter Teyler van der Hulst left us this legacy including many of the museum's specimens and the nest egg that would allow its expansion to the glory we enjoy today. 

Pieter lived next to George Clifford III, the financier of Swedish naturalist Carlo Linnaeus (1707-1778). Pieter's funds aided George in funding Linnaneus' work. In a bit of full circle scientific poetry, it was those dollars and this work that gave us the naming system that allowed us to attach a scientific name to this very specimen through Carl's binomial nomenclature. 

In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name (which may be shortened to just "binomial"), a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name; more informally it is also historically called a Latin name. So, for this lovely specimen, Helianthaster rhenanus is this specimen's Latin name.

In his will, Pieter Teyler decided that his collection and part of his fortune should be used to create a foundation for their promotion, the Teylers Stichting (Teyler foundation). 

Teyler's legacy to the city of Haarlem was divided into two societies Teylers Eerste Genootschap (Dutch: Teyler's First Society ) or 'Godgeleerd Genootschap' ( Theological Society ), aimed at the study of religion, and the Teylers Tweede Genootschap ( Second Society ), dedicated to physics, poetry, history, drawing and numismatics.

The executors of Teyler's wishes, the first directors of Teylers Stichting, decided to establish a centre for study and education. Books, scientific instruments, drawings, fossils and minerals, would be housed under one roof. 

The concept was based on a revolutionary ideal derived from the Enlightenment: people could discover the world independently, without coercion from the church or the state. The example that guided the founders in creating the Teyler Museum was the Mouseion of classical antiquity: a "temple for the muses of the arts and sciences" which would also be a meeting place for scholars and host various collections.

This was a time when science and religion were still intermixed but beginning to divide into separate camps. The world was at war, expeditions were undertaken to secure new lands and trade routes—and the slave trade was slowly being abolished. 

In 1778, Russia controlled Alaska and would not sell to the USA, a country two years old in 1778, for another eighty-nine years in 1867. It was also the year that we lost Carl Linnaeus. He left his scientific work and his legacy of more than 1,600 books covering the literature of natural history from the 15th century to his death, a collection that would become the foundation of the Linnaeus Society, established in his name a decade later in 1788—and to which I am an elected fellow.

Here are some of the world events that happened in 1778, the year this museum was founded to give all of this a bit more context:

• January 18 – Third voyage of James Cook: Captain James Cook, with ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, first views Oahu then Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, which he names the Sandwich Islands.

• February 5 – South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. General John Cadwalader shoots and seriously wounds Major General Thomas Conway in a duel after a dispute between the two officers over Conway's continued criticism of General George Washington's leadership of the Continental Army.[1]

• February 6 – American Revolutionary War – In Paris, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France, signalling official French recognition of the new republic.

• February 23 – American Revolutionary War – Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and begins to train the American troops.

• March 6–October 24 – Captain Cook explores and maps the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, from Cape Foulweather (Oregon) to the Bering Strait.

• March 10 – American Revolutionary War – George Washington approves the dishonourable discharge of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, for "attempting to commit sodomy, with John Monhort a soldier."

• July 10 – Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.

• July 27 – American Revolutionary War – First Battle of Ushant – British and French fleets fight to a standoff.

• August 3 – The La Scala Opera House opens in Milan, with the première of Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

Many more things happened, of course. Folk were born, fell in love, died—and some left legacies that we still enjoy to this day. 

Photo two by Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 4.0.

ETHELDRED BENETT: ENGLISH GEOLOGIST & CITIZEN SCIENTIST

Hoplites (Hoplites) bennettiana (Sowerby, 1826)

A beautiful example of the ammonite, Hoplites (Hoplites) bennettiana (Sowerby, 1826), from Early Albian localities in the Carrière de Courcelles Villemoyenne, Région de Troyes, near Champagne in northeastern France.

The species name is a homage to Etheldred Benett, an early English geologist often credited with being the first female geologist — a fossil collector par excellence.

She was also credited with being a man  —  the Natural History Society of Moscow awarding her membership as Master Etheldredus Benett in 1836. 

The confusion over her name (it did sound masculine) came again with the bestowing of a Doctorate of Civil Law from Tsar Nicholas I.

The Tsar had read Sowerby's Mineral Conchology, a major fossil reference work that contained the second-highest number of contributed fossils of the day, many of them with the best preservation seen at that time. Forty-one of those specimens were credited to Benett. Between her name and this wonderous contribution to a growing science, the Russian Tsar awarded the Doctorate to what he believed was a young male scientist on the rise. 

He believed in education, founding Kyiv University in 1834, just not for women. He was an autocratic military man frozen in time — the thought that this work could have been done by a female unthinkable. Doubly charming is that the honour from the University of St Petersburg was granted at a time when women were not allowed to attend St. Pete's or any higher institutions. That privilege arrived in 1878, twenty years after Nicholas I's death.

Benett took these honours (and social blunders) with grace. She devoted her life to collecting and studying fossils from the southwest of England, amassing an impressive personal collection she openly shared with geologist friends, colleagues and visitors to her home. Her speciality was fossils from the Middle Cretaceous, Upper Greensand in the Vale of Wardour — a valley in the county of Wiltshire near the River Nadder.

Etheldred was a local Wiltshire girl. Born Etheldred Benett on 22 July 1775 at Pyt House, Tisbury, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of the local squire Thomas Benett. Etheldred's interest was cultivated by the botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761-1842), a founding member of the Linnean Society. Benett's brother had married Lucy Lambert, Aylmer's half-sister. Aylmer was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of the Arts. He was also an avid fossil collector and member of the Geological Society of London. The two met and got on famously.

Aylmer kindled an interest in natural history in both of Benett's daughters. Etheldred had a great fondness for geology, stratigraphy and all things paleo, whilst her sister concentrated on botany. Etheldred had a distinct advantage over her near contemporary, the working-class Mary Anning (1799-1847), in that Benett was a woman of independent wealth who never married — and didn't need to — who could pursue the acquisition and study of fossils for her own interest.

While Anning was the marine reptile darling of the age, she was also greatly hindered by her finances. "She sells, seashells by the seashore..." while chanted in a playful spirit today, was not meant kindly at the time. Aylmer's encouragement emboldened Etheldred to go into the field to collect for herself — and collect she did. Profusely.

Benett’s contribution to the early history of Wiltshire geology is significant. She corresponded extensively with the coterie of gentlemen scientists of the day —  Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, James Sowerby, George Bellas Greenough and, Samuel Woodward. She also consorted with the lay folk and had an ongoing correspondence with William Smith, whose stratigraphy work had made a favourable impression on her brother-in-law, Aylmer.

Her collections and collaboration with geologists of the day were instrumental in helping to form the field of geology as a science. One colleague and friend, Gideon Mantell, British physician, geologist and palaeontologist, who discovered four of the five genera of dinosaurs and Iguanadon, was so inspired by Benett's work he named this Cretaceous ammonite after her — Hoplites bennettiana.

Benett's fossil assemblage was a valuable resource for her contemporaries and remains so today. It contains thousands of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossil specimens from the Wiltshire area and the Dorset Coast, including a myriad of first recorded finds. The scientific name of every taxon is usually based on one particular specimen, or in some cases multiple specimens. Many of the specimens she collected serve as the Type Specimen for new species.

Fossil Sponge, Polypothecia quadriloba, Warminster, Wiltshire

Her particular interest was the collection and study of fossil sponges. Alcyonia caught her eye early on. 

She collected and recorded her findings with the hope that one of her colleagues might share her enthusiasm and publish her work as a contribution to their own.

Alas, no one took up the helm — those interested were busy with other pursuits (or passed away) and others were less than enthusiastic or never seemed to get around to it.

To ensure the knowledge was shared in a timely fashion, she finally wrote them up and published them herself. You can read her findings in her publication, ‘A Catalogue of Organic Remains of the County of Wiltshire’ (1831), where she shares observations on the fossil sponge specimens and other invert goodies from the outcrops west of town.

She shared her ideas freely and donated many specimens to local museums. It was through her exchange of observations, new ideas and open sharing of fossils with Gideon Mantell and others that a clearer understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England was gained.

In many ways, Mantell was drawn to Benett as his ideas went against the majority opinion. At a time when marine reptiles were dominating scientific discoveries and discussions, he pushed the view that dinosaurs were terrestrial, not amphibious, and sometimes bipedal. Mantell's life's work established the now-familiar idea that the Age of Reptiles preceded the Age of Mammals. Mantell kept a journal from 1819-1852, that remained unpublished until 1940 when E. Cecil Curwen published an abridged version. (Oxford University Press 1940). John A. Cooper, Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton and Hove, published the work in its entirety in 2010.

I was elated to get a copy, both to untangle the history of the time and to better learn about the relationship between Mantell and Benett. So much of our geologic past has been revealed since Mantell's first entry two hundred years ago. The first encounter we share with the two of them is a short note from March 8, 1819. "This morning I received a letter from Miss Bennett of Norton House near Warminster Wilts, informing me of her having sent a packet of fossils for me, to the Waggon Office..." The diary records his life, but also the social interactions of the day and the small connected community of the scientific social elite. It is a delight!

Though a woman in a newly evolving field, her work, dedication and ideas were recognized and appreciated by her colleagues. Gideon Mantell described her as, "a lady of great talent and indefatigable research," whilst the Sowerbys noted her, "labours in the pursuit of geological information have been as useful as they have been incessant."

Benett produced the first measured sections of the Upper Chicksgrove quarry near Tisbury in 1819, published and shared with local colleagues as, "the measure of different beds of stone in Chicksgrove Quarry in the Parish of Tisbury.” The stratigraphic section was later published by naturalist James Sowerby without her knowledge. Her research contradicted many of Sowerby’s conclusions.

She wrote and privately published a monograph in 1831, containing many of her drawings and sketches of molluscs and sponges. Her work included sketches of fossil Alcyonia (1816) from the Green Sand Formation at Warminster Common and the immediate vicinity of Warminster in Wiltshire.

Echinoids and Bivalves. Collection of Etheldred Benett (1775-1845)

The Society holds two copies, one was given to George Bellas Greenough, and another copy was given to her friend Gideon Mantell. This work established her as a true, pioneering biostratigrapher following but not always agreeing with the work of William Smith.

If you'd like to read a lovely tale on William's work, check out the Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester. It narrates the intellectual context of the time, the development of Smith's ideas and how they contributed to the theory of evolution and more generally to a dawning realization of the true age of the earth.

The book describes the social, economic or industrial context for Smith's insights and work, such as the importance of coal mining and the transport of coal by means of canals, both of which were a stimulus to the study of geology and the means whereby Smith supported his research. Benett debated many of the ideas Smith put forward. She was luckier than Smith financially, coming from a wealthy family, a financial perk that allowed her the freedom to add fossils to her curiosity cabinet at will.

Most of her impressive collection was assumed lost in the early 20th century. It was later found and purchased by an American, Thomas Bellerby Wilson, who donated it to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Small parts of it made their way into British museums, including the Leeds City Museum, London, Bristol and the University of St. Petersburg. These collections contain many of the Type specimens and some of the very first fossils found — some with the soft tissues preserved. When Benett died in 1845, it was Mantell who penned her obituary for the London Geological Journal.

In 1989, almost a hundred and fifty years after her death, a review of her collection had Arthur Bogen and Hugh Torrens remark that her work has significantly impacted our modern understanding of Porifera, Coelenterata, Echinodermata, and the molluscan classes, Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, and Bivalvia. A worthy legacy, indeed.

Her renown lives on through her collections, her collaborations and through the beautiful 110 million-year-old ammonite you see here, Hoplites bennettiana. The lovely example you see here is in the collection of the deeply awesome Christophe Marot.

Spamer, Earle E.; Bogan, Arthur E.; Torrens, Hugh S. (1989). "Recovery of the Etheldred Benett Collection of fossils mostly from Jurassic-Cretaceous strata of Wiltshire, England, analysis of the taxonomic nomenclature of Benett (1831), and notes and figures of type specimens contained in the collection". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 141. pp. 115–180. JSTOR 4064955.

Torrens, H. S.; Benamy, Elana; Daeschler, E.; Spamer, E.; Bogan, A. (2000). "Etheldred Benett of Wiltshire, England, the First Lady Geologist: Her Fossil Collection in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Rediscovery of "Lost" Specimens of Jurassic Trigoniidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) with Their Soft Anatomy Preserved.". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 150. pp. 59–123. JSTOR 4064955.

Photo credit: Fossils from Wiltshire.  In the foreground are three examples of the echinoid, Cidaris crenularis, from Calne, a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England, with bivalves behind. Caroline Lam, Archivist at the Geological Society, London, UK. http://britgeodata.blogspot.com/2016/03/etheldred-benett-first-female-geologist_30.html

Photo credit: Fossil sponges Polypothecia quadriloba, from Warminster, Wiltshire. The genus labels are Benett’s, as is the handwriting indicating the species. The small number, 20812, is the Society’s original accession label from which we can tell that the specimen was received in April 1824. The tablet onto which the fossils were glued is from the Society’s old Museum.