Double trouble in deep time

You wait ages for a story about unsung British palaeontology to appear in the national press and suddenly two come along at the same time:

If you need our finest fossil hunter, call out Steve the plumber (The Times)

Boy finds fossil up to 500m years old in his West Midlands garden (The Guardian)

Rather beautifully (and mostly accidentally), they publicize two of the biggest issues facing UK palaeontology:

1) the systemic lack of support for museum fossil collections, and

2) the lack of Earth science education in schools.

Steve Etches is a brilliant palaeontologist. I was taught that the Kimmeridge Clay Formation was only really of interest to sedimentologists and petroleum geologists; there weren't many fossils to find. Just like Mary Anning, Steve has shown that this established thinking was quite wrong. The Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life - and the new Palaeontological Association field guide - is testament to his skill and dedication in uncovering late Jurassic treasures around Kimmeridge Bay.

Inside the Etches Collection (Wikimedia Commons)

Sadly, Covid has put the Etches Collection in a dreadful financial pickle. If you are able to support its survival, please do. The economic impacts of the pandemic on museum natural history collections, however, mask the broader, deeper issues, driven by more than a decade of Tory funding cuts.

Palaeontology is in crisis at many local and regional museums. To name just a few places close to my heart: the Dudley Museum was closed in late 2016 (although Graham Worton continues to do an extraordinary job); the Yorkshire Museum - built to house the Kirkdale Cave treasures, and with its splendid Yorkshire's Jurassic World exhibition very popular prior to lockdown - has had a staff cull and is now down to a single geological/palaeontological curator; and neither the Hull & East Riding Museum, nor William Smith's Rotunda Museum in Scarborough employ a geological or palaeontological curator any more.

What kind of government, what kind of society, permits its natural history and culture to be neglected and lost in this manner? Shock horror: it's the same government that permits its school system to become an academized marketplace of league-tabled ideology.

Graham Worton narrates the geological history of the Black Country

 

This double-whammy means that, although six year-old Sid Jhamat of Walsall might still pursue a brilliant palaeontological career, he will do this in spite of, not because of, the cultural and educational system made available to him by our undemocratically elected leaders.

At the age of just six, Sid has unearthed a lovely rugose coral in his garden. Its appearance in the media delighted me, not least because I did my Ph.D. on the fossils of Dudley, but reading the write-up of the story filled me with despair.

I don't expect every journalist to have a background in palaeontology. I do, however, expect them to be capable of basic research before publishing an article. I was particularly upset by the claim that Sid's family 'do not live in an area known for its fossils'.

Last year, thanks in no small part to its amazing fossils, the Black Country was made a UNESCO Global Geopark! The West Midlands is world-famous for its fossils!

Nothing to see here, move along (Wikimedia Commons)

Birmingham - when it reopens, pop into that rarest of things: a recently well-funded geological museum!

Coventry - amazing Carboniferous fossils from the former Binley colliery!

Wolverhampton - Charles Holcroft of Bilston certainly built up a collection!

Dudley - Wren's Nest National Nature Reserve is one of Britain's most important palaeontological sites, with Dudley limestone fossils to be found in pretty much every natural history museum in the world!

Sandwell - Nope, definitely nothing of geological interest around Sandwell!

Solihull - There are brachiopod fossils to be found in the walls of Solihull post office!

Walsall - incredibly fossiliferous shales and limestones underlie much of the town. Most of the limestone has been quarried away, but specimens often pop up and, with permission, you can find fossilized reefs at Daw End.

Sid's lovely solitary coral is a new addition to the West Midlands' rich and fascinating fossil history. It comes from at time - around 429 million years ago - when Walsall was part of a microcontinent, Avalonia, situated at roughly the latitude of modern-day Fiji. Tropical sediments and fossils accumulated to become the Much Wenlock Limestone Formation, the same rock type found at Wren's Nest (and which forms Wenlock Edge, in Shropshire).

Rugose corals like the one Sid found were part of a patch reef environment where hundreds of different species lived. They formed a Silurian ecosystem that covered a huge area: similar reefs can be found in Sweden, Estonia, and Canada. Sid's fossil might belong to the genus Dokophyllum, but to confirm that you'd need a palaeontological curator in a geological museum.

This is Silurian Wisconsin, reconstructed in the Milwaukee Public Museum, but it could just as easily be Wenlock Walsall (image from Wikimedia Commons).

So let's start supporting our natural history museums properly and engaging our schoolchildren properly and educating everyone about the extraordinary rocks and fossils to be found right across the UK. If we're going to inspire a new generation to be Earth scientists, we need to stratum young...