The Fossil Hunter
Edward's interest in fossils began when he was a boy and continued throughout his life. Some of his favourite hunting grounds lay along the banks of the River Severn, near Berkeley, at Aust, Purton and Westbury.
His depth of knowledge about geology and fossils was acknowledged in 1809, when he was elected a member of the Geological Society. He joined with friends to form the 'Barrow Hill Club' to meet and collect fossils at a local beauty spot.
The Plesiosaur
In 1819, at the base of nearby Stinchcombe Hill, Jenner made his most spectacular find: the fossilised remains of the sea monster we now call a Plesiosaur. The work of the Frenchman Georges Cuvier was at that time arguing that fossils were the remains of species that may be extinct.
Previously the overriding opinion was that fossils represented species that were still alive in the present day, if only one knew where to find them. In 1816 Edward Jenner himself wrote that 'Fossils are ... monuments to departed worlds.'
In 1821 two amateur palaeontologists from Bristol, William Conybeare and Henry de la Béche first put forward the idea that the bones of these sea-monsters were a from a species distinct from the Ichthyosaur. They coined the name plesiosaur (the Greek for 'nearer to reptiles').
Their suggestions were proved to be right when the first complete plesiosaur skeleton was found by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, Dorset in 1824.
Geology
Jenner's interest extended to geology. On one occasion he expressed concern over the loss of a local geological feature that he thought should have been conserved.
He wrote in a letter to a friend: "Our Giant's Causeway at the South-eastern extremity of Michael's Wood [Woodford] is most magnificent. The Cups and Balls are stupendous. Those of Antrim compared with them are mere pebbles. ... the workmen now supply the roads with them."
As with his interests in medicine, Jenner's study of geology and fossils was at the frontier of contemporary thinking.
William Smith, the canal engineer from Bath, established the concept and discipline of stratigraphy with the publication in 1801 of his Stratigraphic Map of the Bath Area.
Erasmus Darwin, a correspondent of Jenner's, was one of the first to argue publicly (1794) that the great botanist Carolus Linnaeus was wrong in 1751 to reject the concept of the evolution of life forms.
In 1809 Lamarck also proposed that animals evolved from simpler life forms.
The world had to wait until 1859 before Erasmus Darwin's grandson Charles published a convincing theory for the origin of species, based upon natural selection.
© 2009-12 Edward Jenner Museum
Registered Charity 284085
Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England.
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