Caves, Coprolites and Catastrophes: The Story of Pioneering Geologist and Fossil-Hunter William Buckland

By ALLAN CHAPMAN

In 1824, William Buckland stood in front of the Royal Geological Society and told them about the bones he had been studying – the bones of an enormous, lizard-like creature, that he called Megalosaurus. This was the first full account of a dinosaur.

In this brilliantly entertaining, colourful biography – the first to be written for over a century – Buckland’s fascinating life is explored in full. From his pioneering of geology and agricultural science to becoming Dean of Westminster, this is a captivating story of an exceptional and eccentric scientist whose legacy extends down to this day.

William Buckland DD, FRS (1784–1856) was a theologian and a scientist, who is widely regarded as the founder of the science of geology. He was an older contemporary of Charles Darwin and played a central role in the nineteenth-century ferment of ideas about the origins of the earth and of living things. A field geologist of genius, an avid fossil hunter and brilliant interpreter of fossils, landscapes, and earth history, Buckland was also a pioneer of agricultural science and an early ecologist. He demonstrated how the earth’s climate has undergone radical changes over geological time – from carboniferous swamps to ice ages, each with their own flora and fauna. Buckland was also a pioneer of public health reform, who (well before germ theory was established) grasped the centrality of clean drinking water to health, and who waged war on bad drains and slum landlords who exploited the poor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780281079520

ALLAN CHAPMAN

Allan Chapman FRAS is a word-renowned historian of science. As a member of the Faculty of History, based at Wadham College, he has taught at Oxford University for most of his career. He is also a former visiting professor at Gresham College in London. The author of numerous popular books on the history of science, he has appeared on a variety of television documentaries and on BBC TV's The Sky at Night, as well as presenting his own programmes, such as Gods in the Sky and Great Scientists. His most recent books include Comets, Cosmology and the Big Bang: From Halley to Hubble (2018), Physicians, Plagues and Progress: The History of Medicine from Antiquity to Antibiotics (2016) and Stargazers: Copernicus, Galileo, the Telescope and the Church (2014).