Lyall Anderson | University of Leicester (original) (raw)

Books by Lyall Anderson

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"Contributed essays on: 1. The Sedgwick Museum: Darwin's geological specimens 2. Darwin's obs... more "Contributed essays on:

1. The Sedgwick Museum: Darwin's geological specimens
2. Darwin's observations on the St. Paul's rocks and their modern interpretation
3. Fossil trees: Darwin's observations on geographical distribution on either side of the Cordillera"

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Papers by Lyall Anderson

Archives and Records Association (ARA), Mar 2012

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Charles W. Peach [1800–1886] retired from the Customs service and moved south from Wick to Edinbu... more Charles W. Peach [1800–1886] retired from the Customs service and moved south from Wick to Edinburgh in 1865. This provided him with new opportunities for fossil collecting and scientific networking. Here he renewed and maintained his interest in natural history and made significant palaeobotanical collections from the Carboniferous of the Midland Valley of Scotland. Many of Peach’s fossils have not only the locality detail, but the date, month and year of collection neatly handwritten on attached paper labels; as a result we can follow Peach’s collecting activities over a period of 18 years or so. Comments and even illustrative sketches on his labels give us first hand insight into his observations. Novel presentation techniques included the preparation of the palaeobotanical equivalent of herbarium sheets. Peach also ground and prepared his own microscope sections of permineralised plant tissue using whatever materials he had to hand at the time. Study of these collections, now he...

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Geological Magazine, 2009

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The North West Geologist, Issue 19, pp.6 -16., Dec 2014

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Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Jul 8, 2014

The archival papers of the eminent petrologist Alfred Harker span his entire geological career of... more The archival papers of the eminent petrologist Alfred Harker span his entire geological career of over 60 years. These are held by the Archive of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences (University of Cambridge). Harker was associated with the Department of Geology, the Woodwardian Museum and post-1904, the
Sedgwick Memorial Museum. Importantly, his meticulously labelled notebooks provide an unprecedented insight into his development as a field and laboratory scientist. They chart Harker’s beginnings as a fossil collector and observer of sedimentary stratigraphy on the North Yorkshire coast, his trips to Wales and Devon with the Sedgwick Club, and his later work in the English Lake District with his friend and colleague John. E. Marr. This paper examines in particular Harker’s suite of 20 notebooks kept up until 1894, including his trip to Edinburgh in August 1892. This visit introduced the young scientist to the geology of Scotland for the first time. An overview of Harker’s experience and contemporary contacts suggests some reasons why Sir Archibald Geikie later invited him to join the Scottish Survey staff in 1895.

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Trilobite Newsletter, Feb 3, 2014

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The Geological Curator, Dec 2013

"Assistive technology developed for blind and partially sighted people can find wider application... more "Assistive technology developed for blind and partially sighted people can find wider application in the museum workplace. Ease of operation, combined with high levels of potential magnification and object sympathetic light sources add to the utility of desktop video magnifiers. As well as assisting in day to day paper-based office tasks, the magnifier finds application in various archival tasks and collections-based work. This equipment enhances the visitor experience of looking at archival material, both for the visually impaired and the general visitor. In particular, it helps with the study of smaller documents and photographs. It also assists in the examination of old handwriting, and in particular hand written ink script which has begun to fade
with time."""

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Proceedings of the Geologists' Association

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Journal of Paleontology

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Journal of The Geological Society, 2002

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"Contributed essays on: 1. The Sedgwick Museum: Darwin's geological specimens 2. Darwin's obs... more "Contributed essays on:

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Archives and Records Association (ARA), Mar 2012

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Geological Magazine, 2009

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The North West Geologist, Issue 19, pp.6 -16., Dec 2014

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Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Jul 8, 2014

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Trilobite Newsletter, Feb 3, 2014

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The Geological Curator, Dec 2013

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Proceedings of the Geologists' Association

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Journal of Paleontology

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Journal of The Geological Society, 2002

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Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh-earth Sciences, 2003

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Trilobite, Mar 4, 2013

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Using the documents held in the Sedgwick Museum Archive, new insights into the famous petrologist... more Using the documents held in the Sedgwick Museum Archive, new insights into the famous petrologist Alfred Harker (1859 – 1939) have been made. His meticulously kept notebooks chart his development as a geologist from undergraduate days at St. John's College, his work as a Demonstrator to the Woodwardian
Professor Thomas McKenny-Hughes, his part-time mapping work on Skye for the Geological Survey of Scotland and through to his retirement and pleasure cruises around the West coast of Scotland in the 1920's and 30's.

This work is funded by the ‘Friends of the Sedgwick Museum’ and is part of a much larger project to document and make accessible these geological archive materials

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Venue: Friends Meeting House, 91 - 93 Hartington Grove, Cambridge, CB1 7UB, UK.

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This conference will focus on Charles Darwin’s (1809 – 1882) practical work in the field and exam... more This conference will focus on Charles Darwin’s (1809 – 1882) practical work in the field and examine the geological, zoological and anthropological data, observations and experiments upon which he built his subsequent theorizing. It will take place at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge as part of the programme of events to mark Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Associated events include a major new HLF-funded exhibition and original research on Darwin’s work as a geologist based on the rocks and minerals that he collected on the Voyage of the Beagle (1831 – 1836) now held in the collections of the Sedgwick.

Although the Beagle Expedition was Darwin’s major and perhaps most widely known period of fieldwork activity, we hope this conference will explore and illuminate how and where he acquired practical skills prior to the Voyage (such as his fieldtrip to Wales with Sedgwick and his scientific education in general). The smaller projects that he subsequently undertook in later years including plant and animal breeding, barnacles and earthworms could also be examined.

We are also interested in exploring how Darwin collected and documented objects and what selection criteria he used prior to their inclusion in his theories and publications. Darwin’s collections are still very much alive and subsequent scientists have utilised them for different means. Finally, we are interested in exploring how they relate to present day science.

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This talk marks Charles Darwin's 200th birthday!

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The Hugh Miller collection housed in National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh contains a significant ... more The Hugh Miller collection housed in National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh contains a significant proportion of fossils of animals without backbones (invertebrates) as well as his more widely known fossil fish (vertebrates). Fitting the discovery of the invertebrate fossils to a timeline of Miller’s life reveals some significant changes in the fossils he collected, and the topics he became interested in. Pre-1840, Miller was effectively a local collector based in Cromarty, concentrating on his home patch and the most abundant fossils to be found there, the ORS fish. Post-1840 the move to Edinburgh to take on the job of Editor at ‘The Witness’, widened Miller’s field of investigation significantly, mainly through extended collecting trips during the Summer, as well as more local trips in the Edinburgh area. Exposure to fossils both younger and older than his Old Red Sandstone proving ground led Miller to a better understanding of the former worlds he presented to his audiences in his written works. Although very few of his fossils have accompanying collection dates associated with them (in marked contrast to the collection of his friend Charles W. Peach), we can loosely tie them to the timeline of Miller’s travels. In this manner, the ‘telescoped’ museum collection can be expanded once more to reveal Miller’s fossils in the context of the development of his own geological knowledge. The presence of fossils from areas which he never visited in person ties in with his known network of his contacts in the wider world.

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The move south from Wick to the city of Edinburgh in 1865, some four years after retirement from ... more The move south from Wick to the city of Edinburgh in 1865, some four years after retirement from the Customs service, provided Charles W. Peach with new opportunities for fossil collecting and scientific networking. Here he renewed and maintained his interest in natural history and made significant palaeobotanical collections from the Carboniferous of the Midland Valley of Scotland. These are distinguished by some interesting characteristics of their documentation which the following generations of fossil collectors and researchers would have done well to emulate. Many of his fossil plant specimens have not only the locality detail, but the date, month and year of collection neatly handwritten on attached paper labels; as a result, we can follow Peach’s collecting activities over a period of some 18 years or so. Comments and even illustrative sketches on the labels of some fossils give us first hand insight into Peach’s observations. Study of these collections now held in National Museums Scotland reveals a pattern of collecting heavily biased towards those localities readily accessible from the newly expanding railways which provided a relatively inexpensive and convenient means of exploring the geology of the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.
Charles W. Peach had a very ‘hands on’ practical approach to scientific investigation which led him to construct novel glass plates with mounted Sphenopteris cuticle, removed intact from Lower Carboniferous shales and limestones originating in West Lothian. These resemble the herbarium sheets with which he was familiar from his parallel and highly significant work on extant flora including near shore marine algae. He also prepared hand ground glass microscope slides, particularly of permineralised plant material from Pettycur in Fife, using whatever materials he had to hand at the time. Peach’s collection raises questions about the evolution of accepted standards of documentation in private collections, in parallel with the evolution of collecting practices by the new professionals such as the workers of the Geological Survey. Its relatively rapid deposition in museums, compared to many private collections, may also have contributed to its apparently high rate of usage by contemporary workers.

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A programme of field excavation undertaken by National Museums of Scotland staff, volunteers and ... more A programme of field excavation undertaken by National Museums of Scotland staff, volunteers and
other interested parties during early July 2003 had three main aims. Firstly to relocate the exact
position of the ‘Eurypterid Bed’, a fossiliferous sediment which in the late 1880’s yielded the world’s
most diverse assemblage of Silurian chelicerate arthropods, secondly to characterise the likely
sedimentary depositional setting and preservational mechanics of this Fossil Konservat-Lagerstätte,
and thirdly to investigate the wider relevance of this fossiliferous unit to the more fully known
sequences lying stratigraphically higher in the inlier as detailed by the work of Clarkson et al. (2001).
After extensive excavation, the ‘Eurypterid Bed’ lithology was located in situ on the banks of the
Gutterford Burn stream section. Detailed sedimentary logging and sampling indicated that
volcaniclastic sediments played a major role in the formation of the bed; both discrete ashfall bands
and ash-rich sediment were discovered in the metre-thick unit along with monograptids. Overlying
the ‘eurypterid bed’ occur sporadic horizons yielding dendroid graptolites and numerous (at least
12) thin, discontinuous bands of decalcified marine limestone, rich in invertebrate remains. The
fauna within these bands shows a degree of similarity with that identified in the overlying Deerhope
Formation.

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Routine preparation of Rhynie Chert wafers for palaeobotanical examination occasionally yields fo... more Routine preparation of Rhynie Chert wafers for palaeobotanical examination occasionally yields fossil remains of terrestrial and aquatic arthropods that live around the hot springs. Detailed study of the matrix enclosing these animals suggests a means of entrapment and preservation related to the formation of an algal and bacterial "mulm". The appearance of the matrix is distinctive enough to act as a "pathfinder" texture enabling successful prospecting for further fossils.

The faunal list of the Rhynie cherts prior to 1997 consisted of a crustacean (Lepidocaris), an insect (Rhyniella), a mite (Protacarus) and a number of species of the trigonotarbid arachnid Palaeocharinus. A few problematic taxa had also been assigned including Heterocrania and Rhyniognatha.

Recent investigation has added significantly to the fauna of the hot spring complex. Heterocrania is identified as an euthycarcinoid. Centiped fragments show affinity with extant scutigeromorphs. A unique specimen of a myriapodous arthropod with preserved gut contents demonstrates detritivory on the Rhynie plants and spores.

Amongst the new finds are two arthropods of unknown affinity. One bears similarities to notostracan crustaceans, whilst the other, characterised by small (1mm) egg-shaped fossils are the first Diplostracans from the ephemeral hot spring pools ( a group containing Conchostracan and Cladoceran crustaceans).

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