Sedgwick and his trilobite

Standing on guard at the entrance to the Palaeozoic section of the University of Cambridge's Sedgwick Museum is a bronze statue of the man after whom the museum was named—the 7th Woodwardian Professor, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick. In one hand he holds his trusty geological hammer, in the other is a rock. Sedgwick, the man who unraveled many of the mysteries of the early Palaeozoic rocks of Wales, looks as if he has just cracked a piece of rock off an outcrop. Yet, rather incongruously, he is swathed in his academic gown—our man is clearly both the consummate field geologist and the academic.     

MAIN FEATURES OF PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM IN GEOLOGICAL WORKS OF M. V. LOMONOSOV

This tribute praises Lomonosov for his purported employment of the dialectic concept to the evolution of the earth. The claim that Lomonosov's interpretations of the earth are materialistic is absolutely true, as are all other scientific interpretations. Whether he is the father of materialism in Russian science is of little importance because all sound science is materialistic.

Twelve partly substantiated claims about Lomonosov's work are summarized. The statements that he first applied historical analysis to explain geologic phenomena and that he established the principle of actualism 70 years before LyeII should be brought to the attention of those unfamiliar with the contributions of the great Russian scientist. The tribute contains a good bibliography.--B. N. Cooper.     

The spectacular fossils of the ‘water margin’: the Cambrian biota of Chengjiang,Yunnan, China

Shi Nai'an's fourteenth century Chinese epic ‘Water Margin’ tells of the release of 36 heavenly spirits and 72 baleful stars from their captivity beneath a tablet of stone at Mount Longhu in Jiangxi Province. They are reincarnated as the 108 heroes of the Liangshan marsh in Shandong Province, who rise against an unjust world. The virtuous exploits of the ‘108’ were brought to life through the cathode‐ray screens of 1970s television sets, as the TV series The Water Margin introduced heroes like Lin Chong battling his evil nemesis Gao Qiu. Far to the west of Jiangxi Province and several hundred years after the Water Margin during the summer of 1984, a young scientist from Nanjing was working amongst the hills and lakes of southern Yunnan Province. He too overturned a stone slab, releasing from their half‐billion year captivity a cornucopia of new Chinese legends. His name was Xianguang Hou and he had made one of the most momentous fossil discoveries in history, uncovering the exceptionally preserved marine fossils of the Chengjiang biota from the ancient water margin of Cambrian seas.     

Abraham Gottlob Werner: History and folk‐history

The Neptunist‐Vulcanist controversy has distorted the reputations of both James Hutton and Abraham Gottlob Werner. Among English‐speaking geologists, Hutton is often presented as the Father of Modern Geology, whereas Werner's views are seen as ‘palpably absurd’. Both men made major contributions to geology, but they were men of their age, the second half of the eighteenth century, and remote in their general ideas from those current since Lyell's day in the mid‐nineteenth. Werner was greatly admired by some of his ablest contemporaries, and their admiration becomes inexplicable if we regard his views as ‘palpably absurd’. Historical research in the last few years, reviewed here, is able to show how Werner's views arose and why they seemed persuasive at the time. Some examples of Neptunist observations in Australia in the 1820's are given to show the application and later modification of the theory.     

评花岗岩的哈克图解

哈克图解是研究岩浆岩地球化学必用的图件,许多结论就是根据哈克图解做出的。哈克图解只是一个逻辑推理的工具,它所推出的结论是否正确,不是由图解本身决定的,而是由实践决定的。岩浆演化的理论是对的,岩浆演化的理论是从研究层状侵入体得来的,它仅适用于玄武质岩浆,而不适用于花岗质岩浆。实践是检验真理的唯一标准,由哈克图解得出的结论没有经过实践的检验是不能成为真理的,这是最基本、最简单的道理。     

Did William Smith (1769–1839), the father of biostratigraphy,discover a Jurassic pterosaur tooth?

A partial, isolated tooth from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) Stonesfield ‘slate’ of the Taynton Limestone Formation of Oxfordshire is identified as likely coming from a ctenochasmatid pterosaur. Referral to Ctenochasmatidae is based on its very slender, slightly curved crown with near circular cross-section and subparallel margins, slightly inflated root and its stratigraphic age. The tooth is part of the William Smith fossil collection held at the Natural History Museum, London. The collection was assembled as part of William Smith's attempt to identify and map strata around England and Wales in the last decade of the 18th century and the first 15 years of the 19th century. Smith's extensive fossil collection of more than 2500 specimens was purchased by the British Museum in 1816 (Wigley et al., 2018), and thus the specimen is the first pterosaur to be accessioned to the national collection.     

The curious case of Central Park's dinosaurs: The destruction of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Paleozoic Museum revisited

In May 1871, models and skeleton casts of dinosaurs and other ancient vertebrates destined for a new Paleozoic Museum in Central Park, New York were smashed and destroyed. This greatest act of vandalism in the history of dinosaur study and museum development was attributed to the infamous William ‘Boss’ Tweed, leader of a notorious group of rogue politicians who at the time held the reins of power in the booming city. Our research on primary sources shows that Tweed was not involved, and the real villain was Henry Hilton, a powerful lawyer and businessman. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins had been employed to do the work and yet he was dismissed and not compensated, creating a scandal. Contrary to the generally accepted narrative of these events, we find no religious motive for the destruction, only potential conflict with the developing American Museum of Natural History. Further, based on well-reported evidence, we find that Hilton exhibited an eccentric and destructive approach to cultural artefacts, and a remarkable ability to destroy everything he touched, including the huge fortune of the department store tycoon Alexander Stewart. Evidently the destruction of Hawkins' New York City dinosaurs was one of many such crazy actions through his life; Hilton was not only bad, but also mad.     

V.I. Vernadsky and the noosphere concept: Russian understandings of society-nature interaction

Recent Russian legislative and policy documentation concerning national progress towards sustainable development has suggested that the attainment of such a state would represent the first stage in the development of the noosphere as outlined by the Russian scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945). This paper explores Vernadsky’s model of evolutionary change through a focus on his work on the biosphere and noosphere in an attempt to further understanding of the way in which Russia is approaching the concept of sustainable development in the contemporary period. It is argued that the official Russian interpretation of the noosphere idea tends to obscure the evolutionary and materialist foundations of Vernadsky’s biosphere-noosphere conceptualisation. At the same time, the concluding section of the paper suggests that the scope of Vernadsky’s work can be used to stimulate the search for a more coherent approach to work in areas of sustainable development and sustainability across the span of the social and physical sciences.     

Murchison's first sighting of the Permian, at Vyazniki in 1841

Roderick Impey Murchison named the Permian Period in 1841 based on his work on Lower Permian marine sediments around the city of Perm’, on the west flank of the Ural Mountains. However, he had observed post-Carboniferous red beds earlier, around the town of Vyazniki, west of Moscow, lying above the classic Carboniferous limestones of the Moscow Basin. Murchison's notebooks and papers show that he and colleagues equivocated about the exact age of these red beds, whether latest Permian or early Triassic, but he always favoured the former view. So, his initial observation of the Vyazniki redbeds provided a marker for the top of the Permian and base of the Triassic in the European Russian platform.     

Boris Choubert: The forgotten fit of the circum-Atlantic continents

Boris Choubert was a strong supporter of Wegener's continental drift theory. In 1935, he published a very accurate fit of the circum-Atlantic continents, which was based on continental edges instead of coastlines; in the same paper, he interpreted the Palaeozoic belts as the result of horizontal movements of the Precambrian blocks; so, he greatly expanded the role of continental drift through time. This original and very prophetic work was almost completely ignored by his contemporaries. Thirty years later (1965), Bullard, Everett and Smith published in turn a similar but more sophisticated fit; they did not acknowledge Choubert's initial work. Bullard's fit was met with immediate and tremendous success. The present paper analyses the reasons why Boris Choubert was frustrated of his pioneering role. This lack of recognition is related to: (1) a great evolution in the geological concepts between 1935 and 1965, and (2) a poor choice of Choubert, regarding the title of his 1935 article.     

The pedigree and influence of fossil collections from the Falkland Islands: From Charles Darwin to continental drift

The Falkland Islands are typical of remote territories in that their early geological exploration was piecemeal and opportunistic. Whilst the resulting fossil collections (dominantly a Devonian fauna of the Malvinokaffric realm) remain the basis for modern interpretations, published accounts misrepresent their extent and provenance. Charles Darwin first discovered fossils during his 1833 visit aboard HMS Beagle, with subsequent British collections acquired in 1842 and 1876, respectively, by the Erebus and Terror and Challenger expeditions and in 1903 by the Scotia expedition. Darwin's collection, and much of the other material, is now held by The Natural History Museum, London (NHM) but some Darwin specimens were assimilated into other collections whilst at least one NHM ‘Darwin’ specimen was not collected by him. There may also be some uncertainty as to the origin of the Scotia collection, now held in Edinburgh by National Museums Scotland, in relation to a contemporary Swedish collection now held in Stockholm. The NHM holdings were supplemented by a number of enigmatic donations from private individuals and then by fossils collected during the first ‘official’ geological survey of the islands in 1920–1922. Meanwhile a large collection was built up in New York through collaboration in 1909 with a local collector – the Governor's wife! The regional associations of the fossils established the African heritage of Falklands geology, and thereby contributed to an understanding of continental drift as the mechanism for the fragmentation of the Gondwana supercontinent. The Falkland Islands are now regarded as a rotated microplate created during the break-up.     

Digging deep for Portland Stone

The Island of Portland has literally given its heart to London, and the heart of London comes mainly from Portland. Many of London's most recognizable buildings and monuments are constructed either wholly or partially from the white Upper Jurassic oolite quarried from Portland. St Paul's Cathedral, the British Museum, The Bank of England and more recently the New London Stock Exchange in Paternoster Square and the Bomber Command Memorial and the tube station in Green Park, are all built using Portland Stone. London is not the island's only beneficiary, Portland stone has also been widely used throughout the rest of Great Britain as well as having been exported for use in many other countries.     

From dog sledge to satellite: Knud Ellitsgaard‐Rasmussen (1923–2009), geologist

Knud Ellitsgaard‐Rasmussen's career spanned an astounding period of change in the science. He was not a geologist whose name was widely known and it is probably true to say that few students today, even in his native Denmark, have heard of him. He was nevertheless a figure of huge importance to geological research in his role as someone who directed geology along very productive lines, creating an environment which was highly conducive to the successful careers of many talented researchers. He saw and presided over geology as it evolved from the heroic days of an individual with a dog‐sledge and a microscope to later days with armies of personnel, aircraft, marine geophysical vessels, the GPS and the ICP‐MS. He led the mapping of a subcontinent.     

Reassessment of the earliest documented stegosaurian fossils from Asia

In 1929, the famous Swedish palaeontologist Carl Wiman documented the first unequivocal stegosaurian dinosaur fossils from Asia. His material comprised an isolated dermal spine, together with a dorsal vertebra that was briefly described but never figured. Since then these remains have languished in obscurity, being noted in some stegosaur review articles but often ignored altogether. However, recent auditing of the Museum of Evolution palaeontological collection at Uppsala University in Sweden has led to the rediscovery of Wiman's original specimens, as well as two additional previously unrecognised stegosaurian dorsal vertebrae. All of these bones derive from the Lower Cretaceous (Berriasian–Valanginian) Mengyin Formation of Shandong Province in eastern China, and are morphologically compatible with the stratigraphically proximal stegosaurian taxon Wuerhosaurus from the Valanginian–Albian Tugulu Group in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Wiman's seminal stegosaurian fossils thus expand current palaeobiogeographical distributions, and contribute to the otherwise enigmatic record of Early Cretaceous stegosaurian occurrences globally.     

发展李四光学术思想,开创新时代的地质事业

李四光是中国科技界的一面旗帜,他对地质科学理论有着卓越贡献,其学术理论具有超前意义,影响深远。文章从李四光对国家和人民的一片赤子之心;李四光走自主创新之路,积极探索解决中国问题的精神;李四光的重视实践,重视辩证的思想方法论;李四光理论联系实际解决实际问题,在应用中发展地质力学学科;以及大力培养学科带头人等五个方面纪念李四光。提出学习和发扬李四光的科学思想和爱国精神,以创造性地解决中国和世界面临的新的重大问题。      

回忆父亲点滴

父亲是世纪同龄人 ,从 50岁到 80岁是他生命的春天。他以常人在这个年龄难以迸发的热情、智慧、不懈努力和顽强开拓的精神 ,在地质战线上为新中国建设辛勤耕耘 ,是一位在地学领域涉足宽广、具有科学预见能力、富有领导组织才能的科学家和领导者。他总是关注未来 ,特别热心于培养年轻人 ,对建立一支高水平、有解决问题能力的地质队伍下了很大功夫。父亲沉静善思、富有哲学头脑 ,他的许多预见性学术观点和开创性思维都源于他宁静淡泊的心态。没有浮华和功利 ,这便是他智慧的源泉。     

Dimorphodon and the Reverend George Howman's noctivagous flying dragon: the earliest restoration of a pterosaur in its natural habitat

A framed water colour of a noctivagous pterosaur by the Reverend G. E. Howman displayed on a wall on the first floor of the Philpot Museum, Lyme Regis, Dorset is the earliest depiction of a restored pterosaur in its life environment. The image is a naïve effort based more on mythology than on fact, but its haunting mood was a harbinger of antediluvian depictions by artists that were to become icons of prehistoric restoration. It predates Henry de la Beche's famous Duria Antiquior by just one year.     

V. M. Goldschmidt and the origin of the elements

Goldschmidt's fundamental data of geochemistry, in particular his values for the abundances of the elements and of the individual nuclear species, calculated from his observed elemental abundances, can be interpreted as having resulted from “primordial” nuclear reactions and subsequent cosmochemical processes. The compositions of meteorites investigated by Goldschmidt was shown to reflect this in a convincing manner. With this viewpoint in mind, it is possible now to understand, at least in principle, the origin of the elements. On the basis of Goldschmidt's analytical experimental data three individuals won Nobel prizes in the field of theoretical physics.