Etheldred Benett

Etheldred Benett , also Etheldred Bennett (born July 22, 1776 in Tisbury , Wiltshire , † January 11, 1845 in Norton House, Norton Bavant ) was a British paleontologist and fossil collector .

Life

Benett lived from 1802 in their family estate Norton House in Norton Bavant 4 km southeast of Warminster in Wiltshire . Her brother John Benett (1773-1852) was for Wiltshire in the English Parliament. From 1809 she collected fossils in the south-west of England and came into contact with many well-known geologists and paleontologists of her time such as George Bellas Greenough , Gideon Mantell , William Buckland and Samuel Woodward , with whom she also corresponded. Her collection of chalk fossils was one of the largest of its time and attracted many scientists. James Sowerby included copies of their collection in his Mineral Conchology , and Tsar Nicholas I was so impressed with the collection that he awarded it an honorary doctorate from the University of Saint Petersburg (without knowing she was a woman). Some of their soft tissue fossils were preserved and others were very well preserved (like some of their corals). Her exchange with Gideon Mantell about chalk fossils from southern England was scientifically significant. She herself had a catalog of her collection printed, which she also illustrated (A Catalog of the Organic Remains of the County of Wiltshire, 1831). In addition to fossils, she also collected large quantities of mussels and snails.

The majority of their collection was later bought into the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia .

Gideon Mantell named a Cretaceous sponge after her, and Ammonites benettianus is named after her .

Her role as possibly the first female geologist (even before Mary Anning ) came to light from the 1980s and she was the poster emblem of the conference The role of woman in the history of Geology at the Geological Society of London in 2005.

literature

• Hugh Chisholm , entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911
• RJ Cleevely: Miss Etheldred Bennett (1775-1845): A Preliminary Note on her Correspondence, Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine 97, 2004, pp. 25-34.
• HS Torrens: Bennett, Etheldred (1775–1845), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press 2009
• Cynthia V. Burek: The first lady geologist, or collector par excellence?, Geology Today 17, 2001, pp. 192-194.
• Hugh S. Torrens, Elana Benamy, Edward B. Daeschler, Earle E. Spamer, Arthur E. Bogan: Etheldred Benett of Wiltshire, England, the first lady geologist: her fossil collection in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the rediscovery of "lost" specimens of Jurassic Trigoniidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) with their soft anatomy preserved, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 150, 2000, pp. 59-123
• Hugh S. Torrens, Earle E. Spamer, Arthur E. Bogan: Recovery of the Etheldred Benett Collection of fossils mostly from Jurassic-Cretaceous strata of Wiltshire, England, analysis of the taxonomic nomenclature of Benett (1831), and notes and figures of type specimens contained in the collection, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 141, 1989, pp. 115-180.
• S. Laming, D. Laming: Etheldred Benett (1776-184): The first woman in geologist?, In Cynthia Burek, Bettie Higgs (Ed.): The role of women in the history of geology, Geological Society Special Publication 281, 2007, p. 247