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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 13h

Today is the 150th birthday of curator & geologist Tom Sheppard, Director of Hull Museums. In 1929 he sold his personal map collection to the National Museum of Wales, 90 maps for £100, amongst them 3 copies of William Smith's 1815 geological map of England and Wales, bought for just over £1 each.

Photograph of Tom Sheppard, moustachioed, seated, arms crossed.

William Smith's 1815 geological map of England and Wales, showing bands of colour representing different rock units.

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

NorthLan Heritage @nlheritage.bsky.social · 15h

#OnThisDay in 1772 pioneering metallurgist David Mushet was born in Dalkeith. Mushet discovered that Lanarkshire's Blackband ironstone could be smelted in a blast furnace without coke. His son Robert improved the Bessemer steelmaking process www.northlanmuseums.co.uk/blog/into-th... #FerrousFriday

Monochrome image of an illustration of a seated elderly man in a dark suit and white shirt with black bowtie. He has grey hair and sideburns and holds a pair of spectacles in his right hand.

Modern photograph of the ruins of an ironworks (Whitecliff Iron Works in the Forest of Dean) dominated by a tapering, rectangular, stone-built blast furnace built against a tree-filled hillside. The furnace has a single large arch at ground level.

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Paul D. Taylor @nhmbryozoa.bsky.social · 20h

#FossilFriday It’s easy to see why Cotham Marble is often referred to as ‘landscape marble’. This Late Triassic limestone from the Bristol area is a microbialite. Detail from a specimen about 10 cm thick on display at the Natural History Museum, London.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 19h

#FossilFriday & ahead of next week's fossil marine reptile conference @morethanadodo.bsky.social, here are some of Mary Anning's most impressive ichthyosaur finds @nhm-london.bsky.social, including the 'first' ichthyosaur of 1811–12, the large 1832 Temnodontosaurus, & big vertebrae of the mid-1830s.

A museum display case with fossil skeletons of large ichthyosaurs.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 21h

Another lovely East Lothian fiery dawn this morning.

Grey cloud above a deep orange sky and a rural landscape.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

#NationalPoetryDay: 'To Mary Anning' by John Kenyon (1784–1856), written after he met her in Lyme Regis in the autumn of 1836 and published in his 'Poems for the most part occasional' (1838). More recently, Mary Anning has featured in the work of at least nine modern poets.

Top left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet; bottom left, portrait of John Kenyon; right, Kenyon's poem, 'To Mary Anning' with each verse ending with 'Mary Anning', limiting his rhyme options somewhat.

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Elgin Museum @elginmuseum.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We've applied for a Coastal Communities Fund grant to help repair our rear gallery roof - but we need your help! The public decides who will be awarded funding, so we'd love it if you could spare a few minutes to view for us!

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Traprain Law, East Lothian, this morning, shaded from the rising sun by a bank of coastal cloud.

Golden clouds lit by the rising sun with fields, trees and a low rounded hill below in shadow.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Hints of autumn at Gosford in East Lothian this afternoon.

A heron stands on the bank of an ornamental lake edged by trees.

The red door of a small building surrounded by trees with water in the foreground.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

#PostboxSaturday: Edward VII wallbox, set in a lovely stone wall built of the local early Jurassic Blue Lias. Chard Road, Weycroft, Axminster.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

#FossilFriday: an ichthyosaur found by Charmouth fossilist Jonas Wishcombe and sold, in situ, to collector Thomas Hawkins who arranged its excavation in September 1833 and described it in his 1834 book Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri. The specimen is now @nhm-london.bsky.social.

Left, 1834 illustration of an ichthyosaur skeleton (top) with the specimen itself (below); top right, photograph of Thomas Hawkins in a dark jacket, seated at a table; bottom right, extract from a newspaper of September 1833 reporting the recovery of the specimen: 'CHARMOUTH - A large fossil reptile of the antediluvian age was on Saturday last taken out of the blue lias, on Charmouth beach; it had bern previously told for four sovereigns to a member of the Geological society, and proved to be of the genus Icthyosaurus, partaking of the Alligator and Lizard species. It measured about six feet in length, and was only to be reached at extremely low tides, which may account for it not having been discovered before.'

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Searching photos I've taken over the years at Lyme Regis, I found this one of the old sea wall and groynes at Church Cliffs that had to be negotiated to get back from Black Ven if you were caught by an incoming tide. Almost a rite of passage to slip and fall into the sea here. Been there, done that.

A photograph of grey limestone cliffs with a sea wall and dilapidated groynes in the foreground.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What a difference a day makes. Hay bales in the equinox dawn light yesterday and in this morning’s torrential downpour.

Stacked bales of hay in a field with trees behind lit by warm sunshine.

Stacked bales of hay in dull light and heavy rain.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Had a weekend wander around the impressive Dirleton Castle in East Lothian. Built, from the 13th century, of local early Carboniferous sandstones, it sits on a crag of the Carboniferous Garleton Hills Volcanic Formation .

A round castle tower of yellow sandstone sits on an outcrop of dark rocks.

A castle with a round tower and a wooden bridge surrounded by trees beneath a blue sky.

Long castle cellars with a round ceiling and remains of stone partitions.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Gloriously golden sunrise over East Lothian this morning.

Yellow-orange dawn sky above a rural landscape.

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Happy birthday to @aaas.org! The American Association for the Advancement of Sci. was established #OnThisDay in 1848. Its first meeting was held at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. (Another reason it shouldn't close...) More info: www.aaas.org/news/aaas-ce... #histSTM #histsci 🗃️📜

Objects and Rules
of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Adopted at Philadelphia, Sept. 20, 1848

1. Objects
The Society shall be called the AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. The objects of the Association are, by periodical & migratory meetings to promote intercourse between those who are cultivating Science in different parts of the United States, to give a stornger and more general impulse, and a more systematic direction to scientific research in our country; and to procure for the labours of scientific men, increased facilities and a wider usefulness.”

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Tonight’s pre dinner gin was, appropriately, Lyme Regis Seascape, produced by Haselbury Spirit Co of Chard for one of my favourite shops in Lyme Regis, The Seriously Good Wine Co. Appropriately, as I’m celebrating news of the discovery of a Mary Anning fossil we’ve been searching for for 40 years.

A hand holds a bottle of gin called ‘Seascape’ with a blue and green label.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

20 September 1820: on a visit to Lyme Regis, Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick notes in his journal 'After breakfast purchase fossils of Miss Anning', perhaps the earliest mention of Mary Anning junior running the family fossil shop. He spent £3 2s on 'various fossils' and 'part of Ichthyosaurus'.

Top left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and a straw bonnet tied with a red ribbon; top right, portrait of Adam Sedgwick with dark hair and in a dark coat; bottom, extract from Sedgwick's diary '20 [September 1820] After breakfast purchase fossils of Miss Anning - was to Charmouth Cliffs - large flags of lias covered with impressions of ammonites'.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A great opportunity not only to see inside this lovely building but to view William Smith's 1815 map and the Society's 1820 map side by side, and the 1850 portrait of Mary Anning above an ichthyosaur jaw she collected. And yes, the gents is indeed a special place to pee.

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Lesley A Hall @erinacean.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Mary Anning, a woman so forgotten by history that she was one of the few women (probably also few working-class persons) included in the 1901 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography. Always strikes me as one of the less forgotten women in the history of science, but ever being rediscovered.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The curve of a rainbow echoing the dome of the Traprain Law laccolith in East Lothian this evening.

A rainbow curves over a rounded hill lit by low evening sunshine.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

14 September 1825: geologists Roderick and Charlotte Murchison visit Lyme Regis and meet Mary Anning. They called first at the shop, but Mary was out fossil hunting in the rain. Roderick (and maybe Charlotte) found her, 'a fine intelligent young woman' on the beach 'with her dog, hammer & basket'.

Top, extract from Murchison's journal 'Charmouth Sept 14 1825 To day to Lyme & sat in the Plesiosaurus Bed with Mary Anning – a drenching rain'; centre left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet tied with a red ribbon; centre right, portrait of Roderick Murchison with a full head of hair and long sideburns; bottom, extract from Murchison's journal where he went to the 'Western Beach where I soon discovered her [Mary Anning] with her dog, hammer & basket – a fine intelligent young woman'

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I'm often asked if Jane Austen ever met Mary Anning. Mary was 5 years old when her father met 28 year-old Jane in 1804 and it's unlikely that he took his daughter to work with him. But it's possible that Jane may have seen Richard and his children searching for fossils on the beach.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

14 September 1804: Jane Austen writes to her sister from Pyne House, her family's lodgings in Lyme Regis, that they had called in a local cabinetmaker about a repair to a piece of furniture and were shocked that it would cost 5 shillings. This cabinetmaker was Richard Anning, Mary Anning's father.

Left, Pyne House, Broad Street, Lyme Regis: some stone steps rise to a white-painted house with a blue door; right engraving of a seated woman (Jane Austen) wearing a short-sleeved dress and an indoor cap.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

#PostboxSaturday: VR pillar box, South St Andrews Street, Edinburgh.

Red pillar box, road and buildings behind.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Lest you think that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is all great Scotsmen, here’s the great Scotswoman, the scientist Mary Somerville. A friend of Charlotte and Roderick Murchison and Mary and William Buckland, she would surely have been familiar with the fossil discoveries of Mary Anning.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And in the brooding bust of 1857 by William Brodie.

Marble bust of a man against a green background. He has lots of hair and long bush sideburns.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The geological generation after Hutton is here too: Hugh Miller in the famous Hill and Adamson photograph of 1843.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Also in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is James Hutton’s fellow geologist Sir James Hall of Dunglass (1761-1832) painted in 1785 just 3 years before he went with Hutton and John Playfair by boat along the Berwickshire coast to Siccar Point.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And, of course, to complete the Hutton hat trick, the famous and magnificent portrait of c.1776 by Sir Henry Raeburn.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And while I’m here at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, here’s Hutton again, flanked by Rabbie Burns and Thomas Telford in the gallery’s Great Hall.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

While other statues have their family heraldry displayed, beneath Hutton’s plinth is an owl, wings open, standing on a rock which carries Hutton’s initials.

Carved red sandstone owl on a rock surrounded by leaves.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Scottish geologist James Hutton immortalised in Permo-Triassic red sandstone, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. So radical in his ideas that they’ve put him in a cage. @nationalgalleries.bsky.social

Red sandstone statue of a man in coat, breeches and a hat, holding a rock.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#FossilFriday: the displaced vertebrae at the base of the unexpectedly long neck of the Plesiosaurus discovered by Mary Anning in 1823 which caused some discussion at the time, and Henry De la Beche's fun interpretation of how the bones came to be displaced in his 1829-31 lithograph Duria antiquior.

Left, photograph of the long neck of a plesiosaur skeleton with a scatter of vertebrae (circled) at the base of the neck; right detail from an 1830 reconstruction of a plesiosaur with its neck being bitten by a large ichthyosaur.

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Paul Barrett @profpaulbarrett.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Lovely ceremony @nhm-london.bsky.social Tring today, to mark the installation of a prestigious Blue Plaque by Historic England commemorating pioneering zooarchaeologist Dorothea Bate

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National Museum of Ireland @nmireland.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

What stories do collections tell? "Only Time Will Tell" by artist Brendan Earley brings together art, science and natural history in the Dead Zoo Lab at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks. Discover a fresh perspective on how we interpret the natural world. www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museum...

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Reposted by Tom Sharpe

Stuart Ogilvy @nat-hist-man.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Here's Dalbeatie granite with a nice xenolith part of the surrounding rocks of the magma chamber. It has been partly assimilated and recrystallized. The granite is from the South West of Scotland. It is Devonian in age and has been radiometrically dated to close to 400 million years old.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Happy 211th wedding anniversary to geologists Sir Roderick and Lady Murchison who were married at Charlotte Hugonin's local parish church in Buriton in Hampshire on 29 August 1815, only a month or so after they first met on the Isle of Wight.

Left, photograph of Sir Roderick Murchison in a dark coat, holding a rolled umbrella and with a tall hat on a table next to him; right, photograph of Charlotte Murchison née Hugonin standing by a table, and wearing a long dark dress and a bonnet.

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Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Fossil footprint, Brook Bay, Isle of Wight 🖤 #FossilFriday ⚒🌏🦕🌲🦖

A three-toed sandstone impression of a foot, on a sandy beach,with a UK6 booted foot next to it for scale

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

#FossilFriday: a small ichthyosaur from the Lias of Lyme Regis in @nhm-london.bsky.social and its depiction on a print of 1827 commissioned by William Willoughby Cole, Lord Cole. This specimen is probably from his collection, purchased originally from Mary Anning.

Left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; top right, small ichthyosaur skeleton; bottom right, an 1827 lithograph of the ichthyosaur skeleton

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

#InternationalDogDay: Mary Anning and two of her pets. One, sketched by her in about 1826, was probably that killed by a cliff fall in October 1833. We don't know its name. It was probably replaced by 'Tray' which features in her famous portrait of 1842.

Left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; top right, her dog, whose name is not recorded, sketched by her c.1826, and probably the dog killed by a cliff fall in October 1833; bottom right, its replacement, called 'Tray' painted in February 1842.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Interesting obituary of art historian Peter Cannon-Brookes in today's Times. It was he who spotted the original watercolour of Henry De la Beche's Duria antiquior in the window of a London art dealer in 1980, recognising what it was from the later oil copy he knew @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social. 1/3

A watercolour painting of a reconstructed prehistoric scene showing ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and other animals all eating one another.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Battening down the hatches at home as combining get underway in the wheat field across the track.

A yellow combine harvester barely visible in the dust from the wheat field it is harvesting.

A yellow combine harvester cutting a wheat field with the grain going into a tractor trailer alongside it.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

23 August 1825: Newspapers report on some of the ichthyosaurs to be seen at Mary Anning's fossil shop in Lyme Regis. Reports like this, and news of events in Lyme and of Mary's discoveries, were probably sent to the papers by her friend, local schoolmaster George Roberts.

Top, extract from a newspaper: 'There is now at Anning's Fossil Depot, Lyme Regis, three fossil skeletons of the Saurian tribe, viz. Ichthyosaurus Tenuirostris, Ichthyosaurus Vulgaris and Ichthyosaurus Intermedius, the former being twelve feet in length and in such perfect state that its osteology may be distinctly ascertained. The Ichthyosaurus Vulgaris is a beautiful cabinet specimen unequalled by any hitherto found in any part of Europe, being only three feet long'; bottom left, portrait of Mary Anning wearing a green cloak and straw bonnet with her hammer and basket; bottom right, Anning's home and shop, with an external staircase to a door between two bay windows.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Perhaps I should have waited until #StandingStoneSunday to post this.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Cullerlie Stone Circle (the Standing Stones of Echt) on Leuchar Moss in Aberdeenshire, built of the local Crathes Granodiorite with its large crystals (phenocrysts) of the pink potassium feldspar mineral, orthoclase.

Close up of granite with large feldspar (orthoclase) crystals in a finer matrix, with a pound coin for scale.

A stone circle around stone cairns with a solitary tree behind, in a rural landscape below blue sky with some clouds.

Three stone cairns within a sone circle in a rural landscape.

Bronze plaque with an engraved plan of a stone circle and its cairns.

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

#PostboxSaturday: wallbox, post office, Braemar, Aberdeenshire.

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