Humans came to understand the significance of fossils only in the early nineteenth century: their extraordinary variety and quantity, forms unlike anything seen in the world today, incomprehensibly vast periods of time for layer upon layer to accumulate, arrivals and departures long before we humans entered the frame.
This essay first appeared as Cain, J. (2013). Thalassiodracon. In M. Carnall (Ed.), Conversation Pieces: Inspirational objects in UCL’s historic collections (pp. 94-95). London: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781782006510.
So strange and unexpected were some of these materials that it took generations before disbelief faded and eyes could comprehend what they were seeing. Meanwhile, collectors worked with enterprise and haste to gather and sell, count and measure, compare and classify. Enthusiasts took comfort in technical details: size, shape, arrangement, and location. Pieces were given names. Parts were fit together. Communities were brought back into association. Museums were built to display what had been gathered together.
But science wasn’t large enough to hold all the questions people asked about these artefacts. The best minds of the age were drawn into discussions about the meaning of these rocks. Were these objects reality or were they deceptions? Was there deeper meaning, or testimony, in the rocks?
It should come as no surprise that fossils provoked philosophers and theologians from the start. The metaphor of a book took hold. If the history of the world was to be understood as a book, what sort of book had it been? A novel must have a plot. An anthology might have a theme; but equally, it could be a loose array of separate stories. Characters might form a Dickensian multitude, some may be major and others minor, or they might bond together into one glorious epic. The writing of this book may have stopped, a climax reached, or a sequel planned. Our author might be following just an idyll whim, or they might have gone on to others things. Perhaps our book had many authors; perhaps, it had only one.
Thalassiodracon is an relic from this great moment in natural philosophy, when hard work led us to worlds of truly unexpected fascination. This is the start of palaeontology – when science, philosophy, and devotion sat as siblings together to ponder nature. Imagine chipping away at a stone, then finding something like this. Imagine revealing it piece-by-piece. Imagine your eyes and hands meeting the first individual discovered of so strange a species, something no other human had ever seen before, let along dreamt about. Imagine an evening’s debate over the meaning of this relic for us and for the book that is the history of our world.
This is a cast. It was purchased as a tool for teaching and study. It was added to the collection so students might measure, count, and classify the skeleton found in the rock. It also was added so students might see it through eyes of wonder and discovery.
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