Edmund Tyrell Artis

Edmund Tyrell Artis (* 1789 in Sweffling , Suffolk , † December 24, 1847 in Doncaster ) was a British pioneer in paleobotany and archeology .

Life

In contrast to most of the other pioneers in archeology and paleontology, he came from a poor background: he was the son of a carpenter. At the age of 16 he went to London to work in his uncle's wine shop. Then he opened a shop for sweets (confectionery). He was successful in this and gained access to higher circles. The Earl Fitzwilliam invited him to his manor house at Milton Hall in Castor near Peterborough in what is now Cambridgeshire (then Northamptonshire ), where he was steward . The Earl also owned coal mines in Yorkshire , and Artis collected plant fossils there from 1816 to 1821. In 1825 he published a book about it with drawings of the fossils by him and John Curtis. In it were some first descriptions of plants of the Carboniferous . It is unknown who financed the publication and production of the lithographs or from where he got the literature necessary for his work. Artis seems to have been in connection with William Buckland , a well-known paleontologist of his time. He was planning another book on plant fossils, but then lost interest in it and sold his collection in 1829.

In 1827 he was forced to leave Count Fitzwilliam's household, apparently in connection with a scandal involving a member of the female housekeeping staff. He opened a racing club in Doncaster , which was initially successful and flourished into the St. Leger Stakes horse racing . Artis was famous there for his cuisine and the Duke of Wellington stayed there. With the accession of Queen Victoria the interest in horse racing decreased and he got into financial problems, so that he moved back to Castor in 1839.

He also made a name for himself as an archaeologist, was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1825 and excavated a Roman palace (Praetorium) near Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire, which was in the area around ancient Durobrivae . In 1843 he was one of the local founders of the British Archaeological Society. Even after he moved to Northamptonshire, he continued his Roman excavations in connection with the Duke of Bedford. During a campaign in winter he caught a cold and died from it.

Fonts

• Antediluvian phytology, illustrated by a collection of the fossil remains of plants peculiar to the coal formations of Great Britain . London 1825

literature

• Steven Tomlinson: Artis, Edmund Tyrell. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 2: Amos-Avory. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861352-0 , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Christopher J. Cleal, Helen E. Fraser, Maureen Lazarus, Geoffrey Dannell: The forests before the flood: the palaeobotanical contributions of Edmund Tyrell Artis (1789–1847) . In: Earth Sciences History 28, 2009, pp. 245-275.

Web links

• Biography of Chris Cleal (English)
• Edmund Tyrell Artis. Biography (English)