William Davies (paleontologist)

William Davies (* 1814 in Holywell , Flintshire ; † February 13, 1891 in Labdens , Colliers End , Hertford ) was a British paleontologist.

Life

Davies was already known for his herbarium of British plants when he was employed in the geological department of the British Museum (which later became the Natural History Museum ) from 1843 . He worked there on mineralogy (under Charles König ) and paleontology of fossil vertebrates (especially fish). He cataloged the fossils of fossil mammals that he and the collector Antonio Brady (1811-1881) in the Pleistocene of the Thames found (where as in England Brick Earth called loess ). From 1846 he was employed by the British Geological Survey, with the official designation as a fossil collector , but also remained employed at the museum, where he became assistant (responsible for all fossils) in 1875 and assistant first class in 1880. Before retiring in 1887, he was still involved in moving the collections to the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in South Kensington (completed in 1887).

Early on, he used the technique of excavating large remains of fossils (in this case a mammoth skull ), including the excavation of the surrounding area, fixed with plaster of paris and reinforced with iron bars. With his experience he was sent by the museum when it came to the recovery of large fossils, for example in 1874 with the recovery of the holotype of the Jurassic stegosaur Dacentrurus (scientifically edited by Richard Owen ), which was found in a clay pit in Wiltshire. The find was an example of the dangers of recovering large fossils, as the clay lens in which the bones were embedded disintegrated during recovery. He was also an expert and collector of fish fossils. At the British Museum he was Arthur Smith Woodward's teacher .

He did a few publications, but he tended to work in the background and generously shared his extensive knowledge with other scientists.

In 1873 he received the first Murchison Medal . From 1877 he was a fellow of the Geological Society of London and a fellow for life. His son Thomas Davies (1837-1891) was a mineralogist at the British Museum and editor of Mineralogical Magazine.

The dinosaur Thecospondylus daviesi was named after him.

literature

• Obituary by HW in Geological Magazine 1891, pp. 144f

Web links

• Biography at the British Geological Survey