Tom Sharpe
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Tom Sharpe
@tomsharperocks.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.1K following 520 posts
Geologist, writes on the history of geology and palaeontology, especially in the late 18th–early 19th C, and on the history of geology in Antarctica. Patron Lyme Regis Museum. Author of THE FOSSIL WOMAN A LIFE OF MARY ANNING (Dovecote Press 2020).
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Lovely unusual coloured version of Henry De la Beche's 1832 cartoon The Light of Science for sale at auction next month. Seeking government support for science, De la Beche draws a fashionable female figure with gas lamp, wristwatch & of course a geological hammer.
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
Coloured lithograph dated 1832 drawn by Henry de la Beche, titled 'The Light of Science dispelling the Darkness which covered the World', it shows a fashionable woman in a huge bonnet and dress with large sleeves holding a geological hammer and lighting the Earth with a gas lantern, dispersing the dark clouds and demons of ignorance surrounding the planet.
November 23, 2025 at 8:15 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
#PostboxSaturday: George V wallbox, Summertown, Oxford.
A red post box set into a brick wall with encroaching ivy.
November 22, 2025 at 10:18 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
22 November 1832: Mary Anning and Anna Maria Pinney consult JS Miller's 1821 'Natural History of the Crinoidea' to identify a fossil crinoid they had found the day before. It appeared to be a new species. The copy they used was given to Mary by Miller in 1824. It's now in Lyme Regis Museum.
Top left: portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; right: frontispiece and title page of Mary Anning's copy of Miller's monograph on fossil crinoids; bottom left: inscription which reads 'To Miss Mary Anning with the Authors best wishes' beneath which is the signature of Elizabeth Philpot to whom the book was given after Mary's death in 1847.
November 22, 2025 at 9:55 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
OK, that Lias coprolite maybe isn't the most aesthetically pleasing example for #FossilFriday. In fact it looks a bit s**t. So instead here's some nice-looking Scottish coprolites from the Carboniferous Wardie Shales near Edinburgh which Buckland had made into a table. It's now in Lyme Regis Museum.
Photograph of an early 19th century table top inlaid with 64 cut sections of rounded nodules each containing a fish coprolite within a brass and polished wood surround.
November 21, 2025 at 1:48 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
#FossilFriday: Seen on a recent visit to the Yorkshire Museum, a coprolite from the Lias of Lyme Regis presented in 1831 to @ypsyork.bsky.social by Oxford geologist William Buckland. This may be one of the many coprolites which Mary Anning was collecting at Buckland's request in 1829 and 1830.
Photograph of a small, rounded, pale brown lump of rock with an old label attached.
November 21, 2025 at 7:35 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Local laccolith luminously lit.
View across fields and trees to a rounded hill formed of an early Carboniferous laccolith, a domed igneous intrusion, lit by today's warm afternoon sunlight.
November 19, 2025 at 5:59 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
First snow of the season on the Lammermuir Hills. Hope Lucia has her winter woollies on.
View of low, snow-covered hills with bare trees and farmland in the foreground.
November 19, 2025 at 8:48 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
18 November 1826: At a meeting of the Geological Society, Henry De la Beche describes the submerged forest at Charmouth shown to him by Mary Anning, crediting her with the discovery. She was well known at the Society and her name appears in the minutes from which the meeting reports were published.
Top left, portrait of Mary Anning in her straw bonnet and green cloak; top right published report of the Geological Society meeting on 18 November 1826 'A paper was also read, entitled, "Notice of Traces of a Submarine Forest at Charmouth, Dorset; by H. T. de la Beche, Esq FRS. GS. &c." A circumstance seeming to indicate the existence of the remains of a submarine forest near the mouth of the Char, was lately pointed out to Mr. De la Beche by Miss Mary Anning.'; lower right, handwritten minutes of the meeting mentioning Mary Anning; lower left, portrait of Henry De la Beche as a young man with long sideburns and wearing a brown jacket with a black collar.
November 18, 2025 at 10:30 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Also at the Geological Society's Bicentenary Dinner in 2007 was the motley crew of the then @hoggroup.bsky.social committee: Peter Tandy, Patrick Boylan, Cherry Lewis, John Mather, Alan Bowden and Ann O'Connor. Seems we had an unusual number of pirates as members of the Geol Soc in 1807.
November 17, 2025 at 10:04 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
There was another distinguished guest at the Geological Society's Bicentenary Dinner in 2007. How could I have forgotten that I shared a table with Mary Anning?
Photograph taken across a dinner table with glasses and a wine bottle, a woman wears a straw bonnet tied with a red ribbon, and a green dress.
November 17, 2025 at 9:56 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
French palaeontologist and historian of geology (and Cuvier expert) Philippe Taquet who died yesterday aged 85. I recall that he cut a fine dash in his embroidered tailcoat and medals at the Geological Society's Bicentenary Dinner in 2007.
Photograph of Philippe Taquet in a fine embroidered tailcoat and white tie, wearing medals, at a formal dinner.
November 17, 2025 at 9:38 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Plaque at Valley of Geyers on Kamchatka marking the site of the burial of Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova's ashes in 2010. It's a spectacular place she found, but not the easiest to access (only by helicopter from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky). Glad I got the chance to go there when I did.
Brass plaque attached to black rock marking the burial of Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova's ashes in 2010. View of mud pots and hot springs. A pool of mud in the foreground with a bare plain beyond with steam rising from hot springs. Fumaroles with steam rising from the sides of a valley with a steam and bare floor, trees in middle distance and cliffs in the distance. Water spraying into the air and steam rising from a small geyser.
November 16, 2025 at 8:07 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Yesterday's meeting on women in geology brought to mind Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova (1913–2009) whose name I came across at the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka in the Russian far east. She discovered the site in 1941 and is commemorated on an interpretive panel there. Her ashes are buried there too.
Black and white photograph of a woman on horseback and a man with a packhorse in Kamchatka. Part of an interpretive panel about Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova and her discovery of the Valley of Geysers in 1941. Black and white photograph of an elderly Tatyana Ivanovna Ustinova being recorded describing her discovery by a man holding a microphone. Colour photograph of an elderly Tatyana Ivanova Ustinova with grey hair and glasses, wearing a black jumper and waving with her left hand.
November 16, 2025 at 11:01 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Mary Anning got a few mentions today, but it was 215 years ago today that everything changed for the Annings, the day her father was buried. The family had been doing well & business was good. Richard was a man with plans. Suddenly they were in debt with no means to pay. Then Mary found an ammonite.
Portrait of Mary Anning wearing a green cloak and a straw bonnet tied with a red ribbon.
November 15, 2025 at 7:18 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Another great talk today was on women in volcanology by @volcanologist.bsky.social who’s unearthing some wonderful, previously unrecognised contributions and observations by women travellers and others. Lots more to be learnt here such as who are the women in Tempest Anderson’s volcano photos?
Conference speaker and a slide of women in volcanic landscapes.
November 15, 2025 at 6:46 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
And Mary Anning herself (although I suspect an imposter in the form of Leanne Hughes) joined us online, here telling us not only about her costume but also more about her finds and with her BGS colleague Laura Burrrel-Garcia about the challenges fieldwork presents.
November 15, 2025 at 6:24 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Great series of talks today at the Yorkshire Museum on Women in geology with @toriherridge.bsky.social kicking things off with a talk on Mary Anning and on networks of women geologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Conference speaker at lower right, with her title slide on a large screen: ‘Mary Anning and the Myth of the Lone Heroine.’
November 15, 2025 at 6:13 PM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Great to be back in the wonderful Yorkshire Museum today for a day in women in geology organised by the Yorkshire Geological Society.
Classic museum building with columned portico.
November 15, 2025 at 10:50 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
#PostboxSaturday: an EIIR pillar box by a damp York Minster this morning.
A red post box on a street with tres and a large medieval church behind.
November 15, 2025 at 10:27 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
#FossilFriday: Amongst the 'Ichthyodontes Cuspidati' illustrated by Edward Lhuyd in his 1699 book on British fossils, Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, no. 1328 stands out. It's a tooth of Megalosaurus from the type locality of Stonesfield in Oxfordshire.
Detail of a plate from a 1699 book on British fossils illustrating fish teeth, one of which is a tooth of the dinosaur Megalosaurus.
November 14, 2025 at 10:54 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
14 November 1797: birth of Scottish geologist Charles Lyell at Kinnordy in Forfarshire. 'An ardent man of science with a very round, short face resembling the Emperor Alexander of Russia, a fine forehead and altogether a gentlemanly exterior’, best known for his 1830–33 Principles of Geology.
Portrait of Charles Lyell with his high forehead, receding hairline and long sideburns, and wearing a grey coat with a dark collar. His right arm rests on a book, probably his 1830 Principles of Geology. Title page of the first volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology published by John Murray in 1830.
November 14, 2025 at 9:52 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
13 November 1806: birth of fossil collector Sir Philip Egerton. A student of William Buckland's at Oxford, he specialised in collecting fossil fish. He was a great friend and supporter of Mary Anning and in 1835 published a paper on ichthyosaur neck bones based on specimens purchased from Anning.
Photograph of Sir Philip Egerton sitting in a chair and wearing a dark jacket waistcoat and shirt with a high collar. His hair is receding but long at the sides and he has long sideburns. He holds piece of paper in his left hand. Extract of a letter from Egerton to Mary Anning: 'Dear Mary Here you have the result of the destruction of all nmy Ichthyosaurus skeletons. I have been like a little boy pulling my toys to pieces ...' Extract from a paper by Egerton about ichthyosaur neck vertebrae: 'In the spring of 1835, I procured from Miss Anning (whose zeal and intelligence are well appreciated in the Geological community) a specimen from the lias of the neighbourhood of Lyme Regis, showing the atlas of a small Ichthyosaurus, apparently anchylosed to the second vertebra of the column. Having directed her attention to this circumstance, she informed me that though she had frequently found similar bones, yet it had never happened to her to see them disunited, even when a dislocation of every other bone of the animal to which they belonged, had taken place. In less than a week I received from her an atlas, seven inches and a half in diameter, corroborative in a remarkable degree of her former observations.'
November 13, 2025 at 10:59 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
13 November 1807: Geological Society of London formed at dinner at the Freemasons' Arms. Like many learned societies of the time, it was men only. Women were not admitted to meetings until 1904, and membership from 1919. Mary Anning, though, was welcomed on a visit to the Society's museum in 1829.
Early 19th century watercolour of a street scene with a row of buildings, one with arched windows and doors on the ground floor. A group of children walks by, a coach passes and a two workmen repair the road.
November 13, 2025 at 10:02 AM
tomsharperocks.bsky.social
As today is #MolluscMonday and the 173rd anniversary of the death of Sussex palaeontologist Gideon Mantell, here's the Cretaceous ammonite Mantelliceras mantelli described (as Ammonites mantelli) by James Sowerby in his Mineral Conchology in 1814 from a specimen from Lewes sent to him by Mantell.
An early 19th century illustration of an ammonite showing two views of its spiral, ribbed shell.
November 10, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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9 November 1812: local newspaper reports the discovery of a fossil 'crocodile' 17 feet long at Lyme Regis. This was the recovery by Mary Anning of parts of the post-cranial skeleton related to a fossil skull found by her brother a year before. It was described and figured by Everard Home in 1814.
Extract from a newspaper: 'A few days ago, immediately after the late high tide, was discovered, under the cliffs between Lyme Regis and Charmouth, the complete petrifaction of a crocodile, 17 feet in length, in a very perfect state. It was dug out of the cliff nearly on a level with the sea, about 100 feet below the surface of the earth.' 1814 illustration of the fossil 'crocodile' skull found in 1811 with its large bony eye and long tapering snout with many small conical teeth. 1814 illustration of part of the fossil skeleton recovered in 1812 showing vertebrae, ribs and some shoulder and limb bones. 1814 illustration of a section through 3 vertebrae of the fossil showing their hour-glass shape.
November 9, 2025 at 5:55 AM