Darwin the Geologist

The conservation team at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science are mid-way though a task of truly giant proportions – moving the giant deer skeleton from its place at the end of the Museum to its new home atop a table case in nearby bay 4. This major effort will free up space for the forthcoming Darwin the Geologist exhibition which will eventually occupy the area to the far left of the Museum’s entrance.

For over a century, the so-called ‘Irish Elk’ has presided over the gallery space of the Sedgwick Museum, gazing over cases of Holocene to Cretaceous fossils in a decades-long face-off with our other gargantuan skeletal tenant, Iguanodon. But as of February 5th, the face-off has officially ended as museum conservators literally removed the head of the looming, two-meter-tall deer skeleton.

Darwin project conservator, Esther Sharp is pleased that thus far the move has been less difficult than expected. “In general terms the biggest problem was getting the head from its high plinth, down to people on the ground. Because of the massive antlers (spanning nearly three meters) the skull has a really weird centre of gravity and you can only hold it at certain places without the danger of it breaking.”

Luckily, the enormous endeavour has been supported by a keen crew of staff, hoping to find out more about Adam Sedgwick’s collection. They’ve been rewarded for their efforts with new insights into the construction of the skeleton’s antique supports.

Esther elaborates, “We wanted to take the pelvis and tail off the metal mount but generations of previous curators had contributed additional material to this region including, tar, wood and copper wire. In fact, after taking it down we found out that a lot of the mount wasn’t actually original.”

Some additions to the skeleton have already been well documented and they reveal something of its chequered history – in October 23rd 1835 Adam Sedgwick wrote about his newly purchased beast, complaining about some missing vertebrae:

“The very sight of my stump-tailed beast has given me a sympathetic sciatica- a horrible tic in the regions of the rump which rings groans from me enough to melt the heart of a flint!”

Clark and Hughes, Life and Letters of Sedgwick (1890), i, p. 450.

Despite Sedgwick’s Victorian melodramatics, the Irish Elk (complete with wooden tail) is now in good hands. As this article is being posted the deer’s new base is under construction at the Department of Earth Sciences workshop. In its new position, the giant deer will come to rest opposite the Barrington Hippo, raised a meter above the ground on top of a table cabinet. The new location will give visitors an opportunity to see an iconic part of the Museum collection from a different perspective.

Every year, the twelfth of February is celebrated as ‘Darwin day’ by thousands of scientists and Darwin aficionados all over the world. This year’s anniversary stands on the threshold of a major Darwin landmark - Charles Robert Darwin was born 199 years ago today. 2008 also marks 149 years since the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in the book On the Origin of Species.

The countdown to 2009 and the festivities planned for Darwin’s bicentennary and the 150^th anniversary of Origin’s publication is now on. But evolution is not the only thing worth remembering this year - despite their age, many of Darwin’s life’s works are astonishingly fresh and relevant today.

A number of Darwin’s geological theories, published years before Origin, have also stood the test of time despite facing some fierce opposition over the years. Darwin’s major geological publication, the three-part Geological Observations of South America, was based mainly on the observations he made during his five-year circumnavigation aboard the Beagle, starting when he was just 22 years old.

Despite his lack of geological experience prior to embarking on this voyage, many of Darwin’s early theories have since been supported and built upon by subsequent research. See, for instance, the inroads Darwin made into the way we think coral reefs form around ocean islands and the variety of different molten rock compositions to be found inside the magma chambers of volcanoes.

During this time Darwin didn’t come up with an all-encompassing geological theory of the Earth, but his big ideas about the rise and fall of entire land masses set the tone for the tectonic plate theories to come.

But today Darwin’s geological work is not merely represented by closed books and yellowing archived papers full of influential theories – if Charles Darwin’s theories of geology are in stasis his geological collections are still hard at work.

For instance, geologists here at the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge are using Darwin’s work and collections as part of an investigation into the processes happening inside the Earth’s crust and mantle that lead to the formation of oceanic islands – the sites of some of the world’s most active volcanism.

It seems that Darwin hasn’t finished revealing the secrets of the Earth, and in looking ever more closely at the collections he made as a young man, the staff here at the Sedgwick Museum haven’t finished uncovering Darwin’s past. We hope you’ll join us over the next year as we display Darwin’s work as a young scientist through these vibrant collections for our 2009 exhibition, Darwin the Geologist.