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Title: UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils Post by: Allhallowsday on January 17, 2012, 02:06:40 PM UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils
By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD | Associated Press http://news.yahoo.com/uk-scientists-lost-darwin-fossils-060025391.html (http://news.yahoo.com/uk-scientists-lost-darwin-fossils-060025391.html) LONDON (AP) — British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years. Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey. Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq." "It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen. He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered!" Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker — a botanist and dear friend of Darwin — and the Rev. John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker... Title: Re: UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils Post by: indianasmith on January 17, 2012, 05:39:45 PM Very cool historical discovery!!!!!!
I am not sue, had I found them, that they might not have wound up on EBay, though . . . . :teddyr: |