Great Geologists | 33
rhinoceros, as well as animals such as hyena
that no longer occur in Europe. In a brilliant
study of forensic paleontology he showed
that the bones had been accumulated by
hyenas that used the cave as a den. He
reconciled this with his flood hypothesis
by noting that the bones were buried in
waterlain silt which he attributed to the Great
Deluge and which led to the extinction of
some species.
Also in 1823 Buckland discovered a red-
stained skeleton in Paviland Cave in South
Wales which he named the Red Lady of
Paviland. First supposing it to be the remains
of a local prostitute he then noted that it
occurred in the same strata as the bones
of extinct mammals (including mammoth),
Buckland shared the view of Georges
Cuvier that no humans had coexisted with
any extinct animals, and he attributed the
skeleton’s presence there to a grave having
been dug in historical times, possibly by the
same people who had constructed some
nearby pre-Roman fortifications, into the
older layers. In fact, although it post-dates
the mammoth remains, it is the oldest
anatomically modern human found in the
United Kingdom. Carbon-data tests have
since dated the skeleton, now known to
be male, as from circa 33,000 years before
present (BP).
Original illustration of the Megalosaurus jaw by Buckland’s wife Mary.
Through the 1820’s Buckland began to
realize that the fossil record suggested a
more complex view of Earth history than
a simple relationship with the great flood.
Following the evidence documented by
William Smith, Georges Cuvier and others
he realized that there was a stratigraphic
organization to the fossil record which
contained many extraordinary creatures
that have no direct counterpart today.
This included the fossil ichthyosaurs and
plesiosaurs being found by Mary Anning
on the Dorset coast and in 1824 his own
analysis of the jaw of what he considered
an extinct giant lizard – Megalosaurus, later
classified as a dinosaur by Richard Owen.
This was found by workmen at a quarry in
Stonesfield, not too distant from his college
rooms in central Oxford. By 1836 he had
recognized that the fossil record represented
a succession of distinctive past ecosystems
and summarized this in his seminal book
Idealised geological cross-section across Europe produced by Buckland in 1836 (in Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural
Theology) illustrating the general succession of strata and their constituent assemblages of fossils. Igneous and metamorphic activity is also highlighted.