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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Camille Brunel @camillebrunel.bsky.social · 1h

Avec ma pote #MaryAnning 🦕

Bises de Caen @marcelbarelli.bsky.social !

Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 4h

#AdaLovelaceDay: that Ada's contemporary, Mary Anning, was much more than a fossil dealer is clear from her letters with her observations on coprolites, the orientation of Pentacrinites and their association with fossil wood, and her dissection of living marine molluscs to understand fossil sepia.

Mary Anning's account of dissecting a modern animal: '... the second one I disected at Miss Philpots it first had a shell this shape [sketch] very like a smooth pectin only more concave, also a sack or ink bag exactly resembling the fossil one you borrowed from Miss Philpot...'

Mary Anning's observations on coprolites: 'I have no doubt myself but that they were dropped quietly where we now find them and that Ichthyosauruses fed on scaly fish'.

Mary Anning's observations on Pentacrinites: 'the pentacrinite lies with the head downwards invariably with the footstalk uppermost on which lies the lignite...'

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 1d

#MolluscMonday: Rather nice example of the Lower Lias bivalve Gryphaea in life position, Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 1d

Looks like the haar is drifting into East Lothian tonight.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 3d

#PostboxSaturday: a replica Penfold pillar box (and friend), Canongate, Edinburgh.

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

James 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦖 @thattalljacobite.bsky.social · 3d

Happy 223rd birthday to the big man - born #OnThisDay in 1802. So proud to be able to carry on Hugh Miller’s legacy of making science accessible to thousands of people! 🎂

Celebrate his birthday with us tomorrow at Hugh Miller’s Birthplace Museum - celebrations kick off at 11:00am in Cromarty! 🥳

A white marble bust of a man with mutton chops wearing a pink rosette in front of a blue wall

A black ammonite fossil half buried in brown sand

A water bottle fashioned into a rocket sitting on a grass field. A cartoon astronaut is inside the bottle

Two white historic buildings sandwiched between two trees

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 4d

…the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches’ caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur…

—Hugh Miller, MY SCHOOLS & SCHOOLMASTERS (1854) – also on @gutenberg.org
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gutenberg.org/ebooks/30737

Immediately beyond the granitic gneiss of the hill there is a subaqueous deposit of the Lias formation, never yet explored by geologist, because never yet laid bare by the ebb; though every heavier storm from the sea tells of its existence, by tossing ashore fragments of its dark bituminous shale. I soon ascertained that the shale is so largely charged with inflammable matter as to burn with a strong flame, as if steeped in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the common experiment of producing gas by means of a tobacco-pipe luted with clay. And, having read in Shakspere of a fuel termed "sea-coal," and unaware at the time that the poet merely meant coal brought to London by sea, I inferred that the inflammable shale cast up from the depths of the Firth by the waves could not be other than the veritable "sea-coal" which figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly; and so, assisted by Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the substance, as at once classical and an original discovery, I used to collect it in large quantities and convert it into smoky and troubled fires, that ever filled our cavern with a horrible stench, and scented all the shore. Though unaware of the fact at the time, it owed its inflammability, not to vegetable, but to animal substance; the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches' caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur—eye of belemnite and hood of nautilus; and we learned to delight in its very smell, all oppressive as that was, as something wild, strange, and inexplicable. Once or twice I seemed on the eve of a discovery: in splitting the masses, I occasionally saw what appeared to be fragments of shells embedded in its substance; and at least once I laid open a mysterious-looking scroll or volute, existing on the dark surface as a cream-coloured film; but though these organisms raised a temporary wonder …

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 4d

10 October 1846: William Buckland writes to a friend: 'At Lyme poor Mary Anning has nearly been burnt to death and has an attack of cancer. We are making a subscription for her'. Newspapers reported that her friends had opened a fund to help her at the Southampton meeting @britsciassoc.bsky.social.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 4d

#FossilFriday: Good to see a new ichthyosaur added to the Lias fauna of Dorset's Jurassic Coast by Dean Lomax, Judy Massare and Erin Maxwell. It was found by Chris Moore at Golden Cap, about 4 miles east of Lyme Regis, a section also visited by Mary Anning.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A new long and narrow‐snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval

Ichthyosaurian faunas before and after the Pliensbachian stage of the Early Jurassic are known from numerous, often complete fossils. The two faunas are very different taxonomically, with only one of...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Darren Naish @tetzoo.bsky.social · 4d

Sea Monsters at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. Friday 21st November 2025, I’m talking Sea Monsters Past and Present at Dorset Museum, Dorchester. This will be followed by a book signing. Info and tickets at... www.dorsetmuseum.org/whats-on/sea...

Sea Monsters Past and Present | Dr Darren Naish – Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Join esteemed author and palaeozoologist Dr Darren Naish as he explores our developing ideas about sea monsters past and present, a subject that combines developments in palaeontology with studies of ...

www.dorsetmuseum.org

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 4d

#FossilFriday: pterosaur jaw from the Lias of Lyme Regis, collected by Dr James Harrison (1819–1864) who moved to Charmouth in 1850 and took up fossil collecting, his most notable find being bones of the dinosaur Scelidosaurus at Charmouth in 1858.
This specimen in Lyme Regis Museum.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 6d

Dawn, 8 October 2025, East Lothian.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

In Edinburgh yesterday I took the opportunity to check out the fence which has closed off the Radical Road along Salisbury Craigs on Arthur's Seat for the last 6 years. Good news is that access to the classic Hutton sites should be restored next year.

www.historicenvironment.scot/about-us/new...

Photograph of a green fence and a sign indicating that a path, the Radical Road, is closed due to risk of rockfall.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

Last night's Hutton event at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh: Prof Colin Campbell on the Hutton 2026 Tercentenary; panel of Angus Miller (Edinburgh Geol Soc), Rachel Walcott (National Museums Scotland) & Colin Campbell (James Hutton Institute); a surprise appearance of a young Hutton; and our venue.

Prof Colin Campbell at the lectern with a slide about James Hutton on the screen.

Hutton panel discussion, 3 seated panellists and host at the lectern.

A night time photograph of a lit up domed tent-like building.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

Hermione says hello.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

The part of Greyfriars where Hutton lies is gated and locked but if you ask nicely in the church, someone will let you in. The area of his grave is marked by a plaque unveiled in 1947. There’s no original headstone.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

If you have an interest in geology please consider contributing to this crowdfunder by @scottishgeology.bsky.social to improve access and interpretation at Hutton’s classic site, Siccar Point.

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/siccar-point

Building the James Hutton Deep Time Trail

We are raising vital funds for a new Deep Time Trail at Siccar Point to celebrate the life and legacy of James Hutton for his Tercentenary.

www.crowdfunder.co.uk

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

As I’m in Auld Reekie, I thought it right to pop into Canongate Kirkyard to say hello to James Hutton’s contemporary, Dr John Walker (1731-1803), Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University 1779-1803.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 7d

In Edinburgh for a meeting of the James Hutton Tercentenary Committee. The man is 300 years old next June. Looks like there will be a lot going on throughout the year. Great view from today’s venue, Dynamic Earth, with the classic section of Salisbury Crags sill which Hutton knew well.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 8d

#MolluscMonday: James Sowerby's illustration of Ammonites bucklandi from the Lias of the Bath district, in vol.2 of Mineral Conchology (1818), the description brightened by the tale of William Buckland being proclaimed an 'Ammon Knight' by his friends for his mode of carrying a large specimen.

Illustration from Sowerby's Mineral Conchology of the large ammonite he named after William Buckland. It shows a large spiral shell with its inner whorls missing.

Extract from Sowerby's published description: 'Found in the Blue Lias of Bath and the neighbourhood, measuring from a foot to 21 inches or more in diameter, and rather remarkable for having frequently lost the inner whorls; which circumstance, by a sort of friendly pun, has given rise to the name given it, in honour of a meritorious and enlightened Geologist, the Rev. W. Buckland, who having found a large specimen, was induced by his ardour to carry it himself, although of considerable weight, and being on horseback it was not the less inconvenient; but the inner whorls being gone so as to allow his head and shoulder to pass through, he placed it as a French horn is sometimes carried, above one shoulder and under the other, and thus rode with his friendly companions, who amused him by dubbing him an Ammon Knight; and thus the specimen was secured, by diverting the tedious toil otherwise hardly to be borne. May his zeal for information always be rewarded: may his abilities continue to meet that attention they have hitherto so deservedly gained: may his horn be exalted with honour.'

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 8d

Some photos from today's walk in East Lothian: Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh across a choppy Firth of Forth; eroding 2nd World War shoreline concrete anti-tank defences; a path around an ornamental lake; oak leaves starting to turn for autumn.

A view across a choppy estuary to the hills of Edinburgh.

A line of concrete blocks along the shore.

A path through trees around an ornamental lake.

An oak tree, its green leaves starting to turn orange, overhanging water.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 9d

#StandingStoneSunday: the 3-metre tall standing stone on Pencraig Brae, East Lothian, looking south to the rounded Traprain Law with its hillfort, and the Lammermuir Hills beyond. The old Great North Road crosses this view, on the far side of the wall in the middle of this picture.

Photograph of a solitary standing stone in a stubble field with a rounded hill in the distance.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 9d

5 October 1842: Death of Mrs Mary Anning, aged 79, 'mother of Miss Mary Anning, the celebrated fossilist'. She ran the family fossil business after her husband died in 1810. William Buckland mentions 'Mrs Anning's Curiosity Shop' in an 1813 letter. Her daughter probably took over about 1820.

Portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet. She holds a hammer and has a basket over her arm.

Newspaper notice of the death 'At Lyme, aged 79, Mary, widow of Mr Richard Anning, and mother of Miss Mary Anning, the celebrated fossilist'.

Extract of a letter from William Buckland to George Greenough telling him: 'early Monday morning go to Mrs Anning's Curiosity Shop'.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 10d

Choppy seas around the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth this morning.

Photograph of a steep-sided, round-topped island in a grey sea.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 10d

200 years ago today, 4 October 1825: visiting Lyme Regis, geologist Roderick Murchison notes in his journal: 'Accompanied by Mary Anning rode to Dowlands and dismounted there' where they examined the Greensand rocks of the Undercliff, the landslipped coastal cliffs west of the town.

Portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet. She holds a hammer and carries a basket over her arm.

Portrait of Roderick Murchison as a young man.

Extract from Murchison's journal: 'Oct 4th 1825 Accompanied by Mary Anning rode to Dowlands and dismounted there. First examined the real inland cliff above the undercliff.'

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