Posted on March 12, 2019
The first full written description of a fossil dinosaur.Naming the dinosaur Megalosaurus (or helping to name it?).
Coming up with the nice-sounding, science-y word coprolite for fossilized...poop!
Figuring out that a cave had been a prehistoric hyena den.
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| This cartoon has Buckland checking out an actual hyena den - but that's not what he did! Instead, he studied fossilized remains in a cave and determined that it had once been a hyena den - thousands and thousands of years ago! |
Pioneering the use of fossilized poop to reconstruct an ancient ecosystem (an ecosystem includes which animals eat which plants and which animals eat which other animals!).
Supporting the thesis that the Earth is really, really, really ancient - ancient-er than ancient!
Promoting a theory offered by a fellow geologist that glaciers carved many features seen in modern landscapes.
For a theologian born in 1784, William Buckland managed to do a wonderful amount of science!Of course, having been interested in fossils ever since he was a child, and having studied geology, mineralogy, and chemistry when studying for the ministry at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford, we can call Buckland a geologist and paleontologist as well as a theologian!
Buckland was ordained as a priest, elected a fellow of the Royal Society, named a fellow of Corpus Christi, and appointed reader - which meant that he gave a series of lectures. He was also an unofficial curator of the Ashmolean Museum.
Buckland was apparently a bit eccentric. He often did his geological and paleontological field work while wearing an academic gown...and sometimes he lectured indoors on horseback! At home he had a table inlaid with dinosaur coprolites (remember, that means fossilized poop!!!). And he was said to have eaten his way through the animal kingdom, tasting or chowing on a mole, a bluebottle fly, a panther, a crocodile, and a mouse - among other creatures!
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| This is a coprolite-topped table perhaps a bit like Buckland's. Some people call it a "proper Victorian poop table"!!! |
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