337 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
337 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
science
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dinosaurs
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7829705
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-----
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# Barbara Hastings: the first lady of fossils
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## Karolyn Shindler celebrates the achievements of the extraordinary
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palaeontologist Barbara Hastings, who was born 200 years ago .
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![A fossil crocodile, Sarcosuchus imperator. Barbara Hastings: First Lady of
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Fossils][1]
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A fossil crocodile, Sarcosuchus imperator. Barbara Hastings had the
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"singularly perfect example" of fossil crocodile specimens, Crocodilus
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hastingsiae, named after her. Photo: REUTERS
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By Karolyn Shindler 1:23PM BST 15 Jun 2010
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[Comments][2]
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The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, is one of the great
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museums of the world, with stunning collections of millions of specimens. An
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astonishing number were collected long ago by private individuals, many of
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them gentlemen or aristocrats, fascinated by the world around them. The lady
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collector was a rare bird but this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth
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of one of them - Barbara Hastings, Marchioness of Hastings and Baroness Grey
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de Ruthyn in her own right.
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Barbara Hastings was a beautiful woman who adored gambling and became
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notorious throughout Europe, where she acquired the far from flattering
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sobriquet of the "jolly fast marchioness". She was also highly intelligent and
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a passionate fossil-hunter. Not that she often got too dirty herself - she
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would stand at the foot of the cliffs she was excavating, orchestrating the
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digging of her workmen. She built a museum as an extension to her home in
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Hampshire to house her collection of several thousand [fossil][3] specimens,
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and wrote three academic papers on her finds - extremely rare for a woman to
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do then. She even presented some of them (extinct species of crocodiles and
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trionyx, a turtle) at the British Association for the Advancement of
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[Science][4] meeting in Oxford in 1847.
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The founder of the Natural History Museum, Professor Richard Owen, who, before
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Charles Darwin, was the best-known scientist of the Victorian era, admired her
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enormously and called her a "fixed star" of the British Association meeting.
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She travelled to Oxford from her home with Owen, four other distinguished
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European scientists and Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who carried her
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basket of precious crocodile heads and turtle carapaces. Later Owen announced
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to the association that, "in honour of the accomplished lady", he would name
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"the singularly perfect examples" of the crocodiles, Crocodilus hastingsiae.
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For the geologist Edward Forbes, Hastings was "one of the most excellent (and
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without exception the cleverest) women I ever met". She was, he wrote, "a
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'fossilist', and knows her work". That work was the Late Eocene deposits of
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the Hordle Cliff near Lymington on the Hampshire coast where, for six years,
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she devoted her life to the collection, preparation and recording of the
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exceptional fossil vertebrates discovered there.
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The strata at Hordle date from about 36.5 million years ago, and span about
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400,000 years. The creatures whose fossilised remains were revealed - extinct
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species of crocodiles, turtles, rodents, birds, large and small mammals - show
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that the temperature was probably sub-tropical to warm. Their habitat would
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have included a freshwater lake.
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12 May 2010
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The marchioness was self-taught and yet turned herself into a palaeontologist
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of note. Her background could not have been more at odds with this. Her father
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was Henry Yelverton, Baron Grey de Ruthyn, the greatest friend, then bitterest
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enemy, of Lord Byron, who died when Barbara was just a few months old. At 21
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she married the 2nd Marquis of Hastings, George Augustus Francis Rawdon
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Hastings, a man so passionate about his hunting it's said the marriage was
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postponed until the summer so as not to interrupt the season.
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It was after her marriage that Barbara acquired her reputation as a gambler.
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She loved travel - especially to Paris - while London buzzed with her
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exuberance. She would dance until 3am, but rise early and on occasion, as her
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sister-in-law wrote, would "end in an hysteric cry from sheer exhaustion".
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In 1844, however, when Barbara was pregnant with their sixth child, her
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husband died. He was 36. Just a year later she married Captain (later Admiral)
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Hastings Reginald Henry. As was not uncommon at the time for husbands whose
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wives were of nobler birth, he assumed Barbara's maiden name, Yelverton. In
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1846 they bought Efford House at Milford-on-Sea, near Hordle Cliff. Although
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she records collecting fossils from the Isle of Wight as early as 1840, it was
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after settling at Efford that the "jolly fast marchioness" turned herself into
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a renowned palaeontologist.
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She bought fossils from local women and children, and from collections abroad.
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She made yachting excursions along the South Coast, to the Isle of Wight,
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Bournemouth, Lyme Regis and Torquay, collecting all the time. As she wrote to
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Owen: "I am enchanted my dear Mr Owen at my good fortune… I brought home after
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a most arduous miry wet walk the other day two more iguanodon-like teeth…" She
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also produced the first stratigraphical drawing of Hordle Cliff.
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Henry Keeping, who became curator of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, lived
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as a child near Hordle Cliff and was a fanatical fossil-hunter. When the
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marchioness heard about him, "she called at our house to say that as she had
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built a museum she would like to buy all the specimens which I found." Keeping
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was working as an apprentice shoemaker, but within a short time he became the
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marchioness's full-time collector.
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Barbara Hastings also found new species. One of the most famous is Trionyx
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barbarae, which she asked Richard Owen to name after her as she was pregnant
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with her seventh child, "and just now I move about very Tortoise like". She
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was a wonderful, infectious enthusiast, writing to the formidable Owen as the
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most intimate friend. She flattered him, learnt from him, and endlessly asked
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him and his "dear little wife" to stay with them and examine the "wonders" in
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her museum - fossils which were, according to Owen, "some of… the finest in
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the world".
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Many great names of geology came to Efford House, among them Edward Forbes,
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Sir Charles Lyell and William Buckland. She became skilled as a "preparator"
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of her fossils, repairing her fragile, brittle finds, many in hundreds of
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fragments, with an expertise publicly praised by Owen and other geologists.
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Constantly she asked Owen for advice and sent her fossils to him in London for
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him to examine and describe. She was also extraordinarily frank - for the time
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- in her letters to him about how much her pregnancy inconvenienced her
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scientific life: "Were I in travelling condition I wd bring up my treasures
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myself, but as in two months time I am expecting my confinement, I am
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compelled to be quiet," she wrote in one letter. In another: "I expect to be
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confined the end of next week… are you likely to want any series of crocodile
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bones before I am about again in the month of February?"
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When her daughter was born, she was anxious to hear whether Owen had safely
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received trionyx specimens, "which I packed up only a few hours before my baby
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was born - arrived all safe…" and adds, "I am dying to resume my labours - in
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the geological line".
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In the early 1850s, a calamitous event brought her fossil-hunting to an end.
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In 1851, her eldest son, the 18- year-old 3rd Marquis of Hastings, died of
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fever. She managed to write one of her scientific papers later that year, but
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sold Efford House shortly after and offered to sell her collection to the
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British Museum - there is no record as to what prompted this action. She heard
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nothing from the museum. She wrote again, threatening to sell "the whole of my
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Tertiary fossils, crocodiles, pachyderms, Tortoise Birds …" to the Paris
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Museum. Eventually the British Museum paid just £300 for the greater part of
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her collection - about 1,500 specimens - and then purchased a few more at her
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auction of the rest in June 1855.
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Henry Keeping believed that the gambling habits of her steward had caused her
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severe financial difficulties.
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According to him, the steward embezzled money from the estate. When his
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dishonesty was discovered, he committed suicide. "The marchioness," Keeping
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wrote, "was so affected by the tragedy, and her income was so much reduced,
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that she had to break up her establishment and travel abroad."
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His claims cannot be verified but the gambling link raises questions, given
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the marchioness's history. She gave Keeping "sufficient to live upon" for the
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next year, and vanished from his life.
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Away from Hordle Cliff, there is no evidence that she returned to fossilising.
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On November 19, 1858, she was in Rome with her 16- year-old son, the 4th
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Marquis, en route to visit her husband whose ship was at Malta. With no
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warning she was "seized of an apoplexy" (a stroke) and was dead within half an
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hour.
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She was 48.
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All that remains of her exceptional talent is kept behind the scenes in the
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collections of the Natural History Museum - the fossils and those wonderful,
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vibrant letters she wrote to Richard Owen. Until the late 20th century, her
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trionyx and the crocodiles were on show in the public galleries. It would be
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nice to think that one day they may be so again.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/7829705/Barbara-Hastings-the-
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first-lady-of-fossils.html
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Telegraph
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## [Dinosaurs][3]
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var puffs_8255319 = new Array();
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