OWEN (Sir Richard, 1804-1892, anatomist and zoologist, creator of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington and inventor of the name 'Dinosaur')

Long Scientific Autograph Letter Signed to an unnamed correspondent telling him that he has "had the good fortune to find here, collected in one house - filling more than one room, the choicest prints of the research during many years for fossils from the Pill and Gravel beds of this part of Essex and the neighbouring coast. Among the Rhinoceros remains, a beautiful calvarium with part of the bony wall of the nose giving the character of Tichorrhine, Hippopotamus, Irish Elk so called, two good species of Bas, the small short-horned, also occurring in under-bog gravel in Ireland, and the gigantic Urus, one core is 20 inches circumference at the base: Goat, but , most abundantly the Mammoth. Teeth of all ages, some of them very singularly exemplifying the power of the crushing forces to which the Pill has been subject. One great strong molar ... split vertically, another is crushed and squeezed, so that all the plates are pounded together in a conglomerate with the bits of cracked enamel sticking out just like the glass fragments from the plaster on the top of a garden wall, so defended. Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus with Gryphaea incurva & other ... fossils have also been gathered from the Pill at Walton, washed, somehow, out of ... neighbouring ... I suspect that some Rhinoceros-like teeth are of Acerotherium, but a comparison with Dr Kamp's figures when get home will determine this. The whole presents a strange picture of the Mammalian population of the antiglacial period. The singularly fractured state of both bones & teeth, without any water-wearing, clearly indicates the operation of solids in producing this effect ..." with a postscript that "A few marine shells are mixed with the fresh-water shells of the Pill ...", 4 sides 8vo., near Colchester, 14th October

Owen was a biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Despite being a controversial figure, Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils.

Item Date:  1842

Stock No:  39777      £975

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