Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Buckland's name was invalid, and that Brookes' epithet Scrotum had
priority as the generic name of this dinosaur! Sadly the International
Commission for Zoological Nomenclature ruled in favour of
Megalosaurus and Scrotum humanum is considered to be a nomen
dubium which has now been consigned to the waste paper bin as a
nomenclatorial oddity.
A FOSSIL CATALOGUE AND THE FALLING STONES
OF LLANBERIS
Let us return to Edward Lhwyd. In the first three years of his keeper-
ship he spent a great deal of time curating and cataloguing the geolo-
gical specimens in the Ashmolean, and this work was eventually
published as Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia in 1699. This
small topic, octavo in size, designed to be portable and, as such, one
of the first field guides ever produced, contained 139 pages and
23 plates. He had difficulty getting it published, as the usual publish-
ers to the University claimed that it was not viable, so he turned to
patrons and subscribers including Isaac Newton and Hans Sloane who
came up with the funds that allowed him to produce an edition of only
120 copies. It is essentially a catalogue of 1,766 specimens, but also
contains a number of useful appendices in the form of letters, in which
Lhwyd discusses the nature of fossils. He actually believed that they
were formed from seeds that had been blown or washed into cracks in
the rocks. The topic was popular and a pirated edition appeared in
Germany later that year. A copy of this work inscribed by the author
can be found in Trinity College Dublin, and while some of the Latin
text is difficult to decipher, many of the fossils engraved are clearly
recognisable. He illustrated Upper Carboniferous plants, dinosaur
teeth and trilobites among a suite of other fossils (Figure
4.2
). Some
of the trilobites had been described by him earlier in a paper to the
Royal Society: these 'flat-fish' are now recognised as the common
species Ogygiocarella debuchii found in the Ordovician successions
around Builth Wells in central Wales. Unfortunately when the 1699
edition was being typeset Lhwyd was away from Oxford and it is
