John Muir’s Birthplace Museum. The image shows an oblique view of one side of a street in Dunbar. A stone building on the right and a blue-painted building on the left sandwich a three-storey and three bay wide white building with a red pantile roof. It is flying the Saltire and the US flag. The scene is in sunshine.

188 years ago today. John Muir, who convinced US President Theodore Roosevelt that Yosemite should be protected as a national park, was born in Dunbar in East Lothian on 21 April 1838. Today his birthplace is a museum about him. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #EastLothian

Beer bottle label with an illustration of yellow sandstone cliffs.

A sad day: the time has come to consume the last of my stash of geological Dorset beers. The wonderful golden cliffs of the Jurassic Bridport Sand Formation at West Bay on the label of an amber ale from the Piddle Brewery.

#MolluscMonday Rare example of an Ordovician orthocone nautiloid with a fractured shell. Photographed in the stone floor of the King’s Gallery at Hampton Court Palace last week.

Top left, portrait of Adam Sedgwick; top right, portrait of Lord Cole; top centre, Mary Anning points to many large vertebrae which she collected in the 1830s now in the Natural History Museum in London.

19 April 1835: Lord Cole writes from Lyme Regis to Adam Sedgwick 'Mary has a very good show at present of skeletons &c. She is at present digging out an enormous beast...the largest that has ever been found at Lyme'. It took her several years to excavate and the bones are now @nhm-london.bsky.social

Top left notes from Mary Anning's visit to London in both her and Charlotte Murchison's hand; top right, photograph of Charlotte Murchison; bottom left, view of Dudley by Charlotte; bottom right, Ammonites murchisonae.

18 April 1788, Hampshire: birth of Charlotte Hugonin, artist, palaeontologist & collector of international fame, with Ammonites murchisonae named for her. Very much the driving force behind the success of her husband Roderick Murchison, and a close friend of 3 Marys: Somerville, Buckland and Anning.

A Song For Mary Anning by The Lyme Bay Moonrakers YouTube video by Lyme Bay Moonrakers

Excellent Lyme Bay Moonrakers have written a song about Mary Anning

They’ll be performing at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival 13&14 June

See Fossilfestival.com

Here’s the song on YouTube

youtu.be/oNcIz0VwxVs?...

A pair of small dinosaur tracks, with a roundish smaller track (3 cm wide) in front of a larger three-toed track (8 cm long and 8 cm wide), preserved in a gray sandstone; my left index finger is pointing to the larger track and serving as scale (about 2 cm wide).

For #FossilFriday, a pair (front foot, rear foot) of wee little ornithopod tracks in the Dakota Formation (~100 mya) at Dinosaur Ridge near Morrison, CO. Dinosaur Ridge is one of the most popular dinosaur tracksites in the U.S. (cc: @dinoridge.bsky.social, @maryanningsrevenge.bsky.social)

The type specimen of Westlothiana lizziae on display in National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Westlothiana lizziae crawls across a rock in Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh

Westlothiana lizziae - aka Lizzie the Lizard - from ~340 million years old, East Kirkton Quarry locality.

Not actually a lizard, and probably closer to the 'amphibian' branch of tetrapods.

On display in National Museum of Scotland, and a model in Dynamic Earth (both Edinburgh)

#FossilFriday 🌍⚒️🧪🦎🔬

A white rock with the Carboniferous plant fossil Stigmaria, showing many small rounded structures, the attachment points of rootlets.

#FossilFriday: Usually Stigmaria is preserved in dark, carbonaceous Carboniferous mudstones, so I was surprised to find this unusual white example. From till, so probably carried by ice a few miles eastwards from source, it must come from a much-leached seatearth, perhaps one baked by an intrusion.

Left, title page of the sale catalogue of Johnson's collection; top right, part of a large ichthyosaur skull; bottom right, its description in the sale catalogue as an 'extraordinary large head of Ichthyosaurus platyodon, from Lyme, Dorsetshire'.

15 April 1845: sale begins in Bristol of the fossil collection of James Johnson. It included many fossils from Lyme Regis, including parts of two large ichthyosaur skulls found by Mary Anning in 1813. One was bought for £27 10s for the Bristol Institution and is in Bristol Museum today.

North Berwick law with houses at the foot of the hill

North Berwick Law

North Berwick Law view fom the town

#NorthBerwickLaw is a volcanic plug in East Lothian & a prominent landmark overlooking the Firth of Forth. Its summit preserves the remains of an #IronAge #hillfort with evidence of wider settlement on the slopes, including hut circles and field systems. Only traces remain, but the view is stunning!

Dark clouds over ploughed fields and low hills

Impressively heavy skies looming over East Lothian this afternoon.

#MolluscMonday Centre of another sectioned ammonite from the Middle Jurassic Inferior Oolite of England.

Photograph across a mill pond to an old mill with a red pantile roof.

It’s always hard to resist taking yet another picture of Preston Mill in East Lothian when the sun is shining. It featured in some tv programme apparently, outlander or something.

Top left, title page of Parkinson's 'Essay on the Shaking Palsy'; top centre, title page of Parkinson's 1804–11 'Organic Remains of a Former World'; top right, title page of Parkinson's 1822 'Outlines of Oryctology'; bottom right, extract from 'Outlines' with the first publication of the name Megalosaurus; bottom left, Ammonites parkinsonii, now Parkinsonia parkinsoni.

11 April 1755, London: birth of physician & palaeontologist James Parkinson, known for his 1817 description of the 'shaking palsy'. A founder member of @geolsoc.bsky.social, he collected fossils & wrote several books on palaeontology. The Jurassic ammonite Parkinsonia parkinsoni was named for him.

Photograph of a greenish rock with spiral shell fossils and a cm scale bar on the right.

#FosssilFriday: the serpulid worm Rotularia concava from the Cretaceous Upper Greensand in fallen blocks on the beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth. As Vermicularia, It would have been a familiar fossil to Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, especially during their 'Green Sand Mania' of 1828.

She knows her animals, and she makes great artworks such as this print of the species that used to roam Ireland in the past

It's a balmy 9o celsius here, perfect weather for a cold beer.

Photograph of a beer bottle with a blue label with a theropod dinosaur skull silhouette and the name of the beer, 'Chesil'.

Just realised that today is #FossilFriday, the sun's over the yardarm, and I still have an unopened (but not for long) beer from my last visit to Dorset.

Left portrait of Mary Anning wearing a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm. Right, table of contents of the Magazine of Natural History listing a contribution by Mary Anning, and the text of her publication.

7 April 1839: #MaryAnning writes to Edward Charlesworth, editor of the Magazine of Natural History, commenting on a paper he had published on the Lias shark Hybodus. It was not intended for publication, but it is Mary Anning's only scientific publication.

The exhibition moves to Edinburgh for the Festival in August. Really looking forward to seeing it.

#MolluscMonday Bivalve borings in a fragment of a fallen marble column from the ruined Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli, Italy. The temple was famously figured by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology (1830).

Top left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet tied with a red ribbon, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; top right,portrait of Thomas Allan, seated at a table holding a book, with mineral specimens on the table; bottom, extract from Allan's journal for 1824, '25th [June] Lyme Regis Mary Anning the Geologist of this place is a very interesting person and the scientific are entirely indebted to her for the preservation of some of the finest remains of a former world that are known in Europe.'

As well as being Easter Sunday, today is, apparently, Geologists' Day, so here is the journal of Scottish mineralogist Thomas Allan (1777–1833) who visited Lyme Regis in June 1824 and was much impressed by the expertise of 'Mary Anning the Geologist of this Place'. #MaryAnning

Pencil drawings of mainly fossil marine reptile teeth.

#FossilFriday: Mary Anning's hand-drawn copy of a plate of ichthyosaur and other teeth copied from WD Conybeare's 1822 paper, Additional Notices on Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus. #MaryAnning

🐚 Grâce à ses découvertes de #fossiles remarquables, Mary Anning est reconnue comme pionnière en #paléontologie. Au XIXe siècle, aux prémices de cette #science encore nouvelle, ce n'était pas tout à fait le cas.

Peggy Vincent, paléontologue et chercheuse CNRS au Muséum, revient sur son histoire. 📖

Likewise! I think it needs to be more widely known.

Looking forward to seeing the Gwen John exhibition when it opens in Edinburgh on 1 August.

The Gwen John exhibition will be in Edinburgh from 1 August at Modern 2.

Top left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; top right, photograph of Lord Cole, later 3rd Earl of Enniskillen, in a dark frock coat and waistcoat, bow tie, and with a beard; bottom, extract from a letter from Mary Anning to Cole: '...I have about 12 Ophiuras fro 1 shilling to 5, pines from 1 to 7/6, only 3 specimens of Logo not first rate one iridescent one in stone a a slab of Penta[crinites] at £1-5-0 Ammonites both polished and rough from 1 shilling to 25s ...'

1 April 1839: Mary Anning writes to her friend fossil collector Lord Cole with prices of fossils she has in stock, including starfish from 1 to 5 shillings, Pinna from 1 shilling to 7s 6d, Pentacrinites for £1 5s and ammonites, some cut and polished from 1 shilling to 25 shillings. #MaryAnning

It's brilliant. You'll have a fantastic time. I've been going since the first in 2005, although I missed a couple around 2019-20, and it's always been great.