Fossils were collected by many enthusiasts during this period, though the first time they were scientifically described was by Robert Hooke in 1665. Hooke was a remarkable polymath and is best known for his role as the founding father of the science of the microscope. In his large folio volume Micrographia, published in 1665, Hooke devoted a section to fossils. His microscope showed him that fossilized wood had a structure identical to that of wood taken from a tree nearby, and he described the fossil in terms that fit perfectly with our modern understanding.
Hooke also featured a fine image of the microscopic spheres that comprise limestone. His drawing, captioned ‘Kettering-stone’, was described in his text: ‘This stone is brought from Kettering in Northampton-shire, and digg’d out of a Quarry, as I am inform’d.’19
His specimen was demonstrated to the Fellows of the Royal Society on Sunday, April 15, 1663, and attracted much attention. That was an auspicious date; his other demonstration that day was of thin sections of cork. Hooke observed that the specimen (from a wine bottle) showed itself to comprise numerous small boxes, the cell walls of the cork. The room-like nature of each component led Hooke to call them ‘cells’ – and this is the term that has come down to us today for all the cells that we see in living organisms.20
British philosopher Robert Hooke announced the first reasoned account of the process of fossilization in his book Micrographia, published in 1665. He thought that organic remains became filled with ‘stony particles’ and thus became petrified.
There were other fossils in the Royal Society collections at the time, and examples ranging from fossilized teeth to skeletons of fish were included in the Society’s catalogue of rarities, with descriptions showing that the petrification of organic remains was understood as a natural process.21
Under his microscope, Hooke could study the fractured surface of this Middle Jurassic oolite rock. He was the first to make detailed studies of rock formations and his conclusions about the processes of fossilization proved to be influential.
The collecting of fossils soon became a popular hobby for the learned classes. In 1695 John Woodward was appointed the first Professor of Geology at Cambridge University. He recognized the widespread occurrence of fossils and taught that they had been laid down by floods to form successive strata. Woodward became an avid collector of fossils and minerals, and eventually amassed over 9,000 specimens. He donated them all to the University, where they became the nucleus of what later became the Sedgwick Museum. In 1699 Edward Lhuyd published accurate engravings of ichthyosaur bones, vertebræ and limb elements in a book along with fossilized shark’s teeth and sea urchins, and a variety of petrified seashells and ferns.22
Lhuyd was appointed assistant to Robert Plot, a graduate of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, who had been appointed Professor of Chemistry and the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in March 1683. It was Plot who published the first book to feature a picture of a dinosaur bone, The Natural History of Oxfordshire,23 in June 1677. He did not know what it was, and believed it to be a fossilized thigh-bone from a biblical giant, though it looked like a fossilized scrotum. Lhuyd went on to succeed Plot as Keeper.
Nehemiah Grew published pictures including ‘Animal Bodies Petrify’d’ as table 19 in the book Musæum Regalis Societatis, or, A catalogue and description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities …, which the Royal Society published in 1681.
By the end of the seventeenth century, popular fossil finds were becoming more familiar in Britain and many had been well documented. In Switzerland, as in England, fossilized bones were always assumed to be human, and so when naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer described two ichthyosaur vertebræ in 1708 he identified them as being the mortal remains of a person who had been drowned in the biblical flood and named them Homo diluvia tristis testi (‘sad evidence of man in the floods’).
In 1697 Edward Lhuyd engraved his pioneering studies of fossils, and was encouraged by John Ray to publish them. Failing to find a publisher, he solicited subscribers and eventually had enough money to publish Lithophylacii Brittannici Ichnographia in 1699.
Robert Darwin, ancestor of Charles, discovered this skeleton of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus in 1718. It was displayed in the local vicarage as the bones of a sinner who had died in the great flood, before Darwin recognized it as a fossil.
Then, in 1719, palæontology was quietly born. A clergyman scientist named William Stukeley, a studious man from a legal family, set out for the first time to develop the systematic study of archæological remains. Stukeley came from Holbeach, in Lincolnshire, and was a friend of Isaac Newton. Because of his scientific accomplishments, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1718 became the first Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries in London. The great English prehistoric monuments at Avebury and Stonehenge had long been sites of cultural interest, and indeed Stukeley himself was fascinated by the Druids, but neither site had been academically investigated until Stukeley showed interest in their origins. He examined them systematically, and this is how he came to be regarded as a father of archæology. In 1718 Stukeley visited the Reverend John South, Rector of Elston, near Newark on the boundary with Nottinghamshire, some 50 miles (80 km) from his home. In the nearby quarries of Fulbeck, Blue Lias rock was being mined and a fossil plesiosaur came to light. It was taken home by South, and became known locally as the Elston crocodile. The owner of Elston Hall was Robert Darwin, himself an FRS, and destined to become the great-grandfather of Charles Darwin. It was hoped that Stukeley could examine the ancient skeleton and find out more about it. Stukeley’s account of the discovery is meticulous:
There are Sixteen Vertebræ of the Back and Loyns very plain and distinct, with their Processes and intermediate Cartilages, Nine whole or partial Ribs of the Left-side, the Os Sacrum, Ilium in situ, and two Thigh-Bones displac’d a little, the Beginnings of the Tibia and Fibula of the Right-Leg; on one Corner there seem to be the Vestigia of a Foot with four of the five Toes, and a little way off an entire Toe, now left perfect in the Stone – there are no less than Eleven Joints of the Tail, and the Cartilages between them of a White Colour distinguishable from the rest. Sir Hans Sloan has a Fish-Sceleton, amongst his immense Treasure of Curiosities, found near this Place, given by the Duke of Rutland.
Left: When Johann Jakob Scheuchzer of Zürich was shown this fossilized salamander, he believed it to be the remains of a preserved human victim of the Noahic flood. It is in the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
Right: Scheuchzer’s published account, Homo diluvii testis (A Flood Man), appeared in 1726. Conventional interpretations of these fossils (like Robert Darwin’s ‘Elston crocodile’) were taken as tangible evidence of biblical realities.
Stukeley discussed all this with his Royal Society friends, and his curious specimen was taken to London for inspection by the Fellows. An account of the discovery was presented to a meeting of the Fellows by Robert Darwin on December 11, 1718, and Stukeley was subsequently invited to publish a formal account in the Society’s journal. This was the first scientific description of a prehistoric reptile skeleton, which in 1824 was named Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, and today the remains are on display at the
