Journal and Proceedings of
The Royal Society of New South Wales
Volume 125 Parts 3 and 4 [Issued December, 1992]
CONTENTS
| AUTHORS & TITLES | PAGES |
| Webby, B.D., Ordovician island biotas: New South Wales record and global implications [Clarke Memorial Lecture for 1991] |
51-77 |
| Potter, E.C., On being interested in the Extreme [Presidential Address 1992] |
79-91 |
| Branagan, David, Richard Owen, Thomas Mitchell and Australian Science. A Commemorative Symposium | 93-94 |
| Branagan, David, Richard Owen in the Antipodean Context [A review] | 95-102 |
| Holland, Julian, Thomas Mitchell and the Origins of Australian Vertebrate Palaeontology | 103-106 |
| Player, Ann, Julian Tenison Woods, Richard Owen and Ancient Australia | 107-110 |
| Osborne, R.A.L., Australian Red Earth Bones | 111 |
| Willis, Paul, M.A., Davies, Susie, M., and Osborne, R. Armstrong L., Important Vertebrate Fossils from the palaeontological collections of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Sydney | 113-118 |
| Shortland, Michael, Plumbing the Depths; on caves and the men of Geology | 119-132 |
| Rupke, Nicholaas, Richard Owen and the Victorian Museum Movement | 133-136 |
pp.51-77
Ordovician island biotas: New South Wales record and global implications
B.D.Webby
Clarke Memorial Lecture, delivered to the Royal Society of New South Wales, 23rd October 1991, at the Australian Museum
Abstract. The Ordovician period of earth history from about 500 to 430 Ma was characterized by significant phases of subduction-related volcanic activity and major evolutionary radiations of marine invertebrate taxa. Two important associations of Ordovician volcanics and sediments are preserved in fault-bounded remnants of the Lachlan Fold Belt in central New South Wales. The stratigraphy of both remnants (Molong High and Parkes Platform) is similar, with an early-mid Ordovician phase of volcanicity, then a quieter phase of island shelf-fringing to non-fringing bank-type shallow carbonate deposition, part drowning to form deeper island slope and basin conditions, and then resumption of volcanicity to the end of the Ordovician. A uniquely well-preserved record of low-latitude, offshore island shelf to slope biofacies assemblages of Gisbornian-Eastonian (Caradoc-early Ashgill) age has been documented. The terrigenous-fringing inner shelf includes three low-diversity associations, specifically, two transgressional, the lingulide and Eodinobolus biofacies of quiet water, intertidal aspect, and a third, the regressional, rhynchonellide biofacies, associated with rough water, on a sandy to pebbly substrate. The mid shelf has an open, shoal-type coral (Tetradium cribriforme) and stromatoporoid-dominated biofacies, and the outer shelf a richly diverse level-bottom strophomenide biofacies associated with a muddy substrate below wave base. Also recorded are shallow, quiet-water, terrigenous-free, "lagoonal" platform biofacies, and deeper, island slope periplatform ooze and graptolite basin biofacies. The periplatforrn oozes occur in allochthonous blocks, and exhibit a remarkably diverse siliceous sponge fauna.
The major Ordovician radiations have been attributed mainly to the global expansion of major invertebrate taxa, especially elements of the "Paleozoic" fauna of Sepkoski. Using the North American Platform as model, Sepkoski proposed that elements of the "Paleozoic" fauna, after originating onshore, were displaced progressively offshore through time. Inspection of the New South Wales onshore-offshore record of island biotas shows, on the contrary, the highest levels of productivity of new higher taxa and community types in the mid-outer shelf and slope habitats, not onshore. Moreover, there is no evidence of offshore displacement of stocks through the 10-15 Ma history of the island complex. A strong bias in the global Ordovician fossil record exists because continental platform biotas are much more widespread, accessible and well preserved than those of island habitats. The latter are often destroyed by subduction or much altered by metamorphism. Only by focussing on the few small remnants ("windows") of well preserved Ordovician island biotas like the New South Wales occurrences, given how significant modern islands are in explaining evolution and dispersa1 of organisms, can we expect to achieve a truly balanced global view of how the Early Palaeozoic diversification of metazoan life, including the Ordovician radiations, may have occurred.
pp.79-91
On being Interested in the Extreme
E.C. Potter
Presidential Address delivered before the Royal Society of New South Wales on 1st April,1992
Abstract. A listing of things in order of some characteristic generates an extreme at each end. Each extreme merits a superlative, such as highest or lowest, shortest or longest, and so on. More qualification and conditions must usually be applied before extremes are defined adequately, so that the supply of extremes is seemingly endless. As time progresses, discovery and attainment cause displacement of existing extremes by even more superlative ones. In this paper study and analysis are presented of selected familiar extremes of number, of human fleetness and strength, and of topology. Thus, the highest number expressible by three numerals is nine raised to the ninth power of nine, but this extreme is hugely surpassed if Roman numerals are used. In the field of human endeavour, analysis of trends in successive extremes of drug-free running indicates that the first woman to run a 4-minute mile will do so around the year 2025, about which time men will be attaining the ultimate extreme for the same distance of close to 222 seconds. Curiously, the extreme of human efficiency for lifting a mass above the head is exhibited by the male of the species weighing within about 2% of 60 kg. New extremes are continually being discovered. For example, all conventional 6-sided dice are not the same, and the extreme of 16 different has recently been proved to occur by chance in the ordinary market place.
pp.93-94
Richard Owen, Thomas Mitchell and Australian Science A Commemorative Symposium
David Branagan
On Saturday, 24th October, 1992 the well-known expatriate art critic and author, Robert Hughes, was addressing a distinguished audience at Australia's Parliament House on the topic "What's a museum for?"
At the same time a smaller, but possibly no less distinguished group, of scientists and historians, was meeting at Wombeyan Caves Reserve, a delightful, but somewhat isolated mountain retreat, several hours drive north from Canberra, to discuss the work of several long-dead scientists and their associates.
Although at first glance these events seem quite removed from each other in the level of significance (both politically and socially), in relevance, and presumably in elegance, there were some surprising relationships.
Although he was considering mainly art galleries Hughes used the comprehensive term "museums" in much of his discussion, lamenting the "age of museum triumphalism" and the "advent of mass cultural tourism". Hughes criticised the "blandness of current curatorial policies" He believed that the future "belonged to small, intimate storehouses [of culture]....not plagued with great tides of inattentive visitors... such places are not cathedrals but chapels. It belongs to what is local, and used once to be derided as 'provincial', In them the pure function of the museum can flourish again". (Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October, 1992), Hughes's lecture came at a time when the future of the National Museum of Australia is once again being reviewed, after a stop-start history of many years. It comes when University museums are being threatened with closure, and when directors of many of our major storehouse of precious archives of every type ( including libraries) are desperate for staff and funding to preserve and display priceless material.
Yet, ironically, it comes also at a time when there is a renewed interest in things Australian by the community at large, but who seem to be unaware of the problems involved in the operation of these chapels of art, science and technology.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the present situation is that many Australian museums seem to be blindly following international trends and reducing, or completely removing the research sections of their organisations to the detriment of the displays, which become in time mere items for entertainment with little instruction.
What did the Owen-Mitchell Symposium have to do with such matters?
In a sense the story starts in the Cathedral Cave at Wellington in 1830 and ends with the Great Cathedral of Science, the British Museum of Natural History in London, completed in the 1880s.
Thomas Mitchell about 1847 (Royal Geographical Society of Queensland)
The meeting considered a number of aspects of the lives of Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), Sir Thomas Mitchell (1792- 1855) and related nineteenth century figures in a series of papers interspersed with lively discussion. Although the happy coincidence of the centenary of Owen's death and the bicentenary of Mitchell's birth was the initial reason for the symposium, the major link was the involvement by Mitchell in the exploration of the Wellington Caves in the 1830s, the bones of extinct giant organisms which were discovered there and some of which were subsequently taken to England by Mitchell and studied by Owen.
Two papers by David Branagan and Julian Holland outlined aspects of the careers of Owen and Mitchell. The former paper concentrates on the antipodean aspects of Owen's work, which has been generally neglected by earlier workers, while the 1atter, which is an abstract based on a forthcoming large-scale appraisal of Mitchell's work, considered some formative influences on Mitchell.
A paper by Ann Player discusses a facet of the work of J.E. Tenison Woods, an early student of Australian Caves, who was involved in the discovery of the large emu-like bird, named by Owen Dromornis, and who did much to popularise science in the Australian press.
Three papers were given at the Symposium on the fossil material itself. Armstrong Osborne considered the sediments which encase the vertebrate fragments in Wellington and Wombeyan Caves. Jeannette Hope discussed the fossil fauna she had examined from the Wombeyan Caves area, and the influence on her work of earlier vertebrate palaeontologists Robert Broom in the 19th century and Norman Wakefield who had encouraged her work prior to his relatively early death . [This paper is not reproduced here, as Dr. Hope is overseas]. The paper by Paul Willis, Susie Davies and Armstrong Osborne documents the exciting find of previously undescribed material from Wellington, Wombeyan and Clairvaulx, near Glen Innes, the result of what the authors called the "pursuit of three presently unpopular activities - 1ooking backwards, curiosity-driven research and the study of collections", and brings the Russian scientist Maklouho-Maclay, Edgeworth David, Robert Broom and more recent researchers into the story. These papers were followed up by visits to important sites both on the surface and underground.
Michael Shortland's paper broadens the story by examining the influence of the study of caves on geological thought from the 18th through much of the 19th century, an influence which Dr. Shortland suggests extends indeed much further, and which has been little researched to date.
The Symposium ended with Nicolaas Rupke's paper on Owen and the Victorian Museum movement, showing his importance in the development of museums, both as sites of popular culture and as research organisations.
Taken in all, this symposium shows the value of looking backwards occasionally, to appreciate both the achievements and failures of the past, and to apply the lessons for the future. What will our museums of the twenty-first century be like? In fact will there be any?
The anonymous author in the Illustrated Sydney News wrote (1892): "the odd thing about the fossil bones is this - they reveal to us something of the history of Australia, something of the history of our own land as it is written on tables of stone by historians without prejudice, by fingers void of passion. The geological records of a country are true, and the fossil remainders are the dates of the history". However as perhaps the paper above indicates those humans who have attempted to interpret the story are not without prejudice or passion, which is probably not a bad thing. There would be little of interest in a bloodless history of science!
This symposium was organised by the Earth Sciences History Group of the Geological Society of Australia Inc. The Group is grateful to the Royal Society of New South Wales for assistance in publishing the proceedings. Thanks are due to the Wombeyan Caves Reserve Trust for making facilities available for the meeting.
pp.95-102
Richard Owen in the Antipodean Context [A review]
David Branagan
Abstract. Richard Owen (1804-92) played a central part in the development of Australasian vertebrate palaeontology, although he never visited the antipodes. His identification and description of many fossil (and recent) forms directly influenced several generations of Australasian researchers, and continues, though indirectly, to influence the present researchers, who must perforce return to his work for comparison.
pp.103-106
Thomas Mitchell and the Origins of Australian Vertebrate PalaeontologyJulian Holland
The following is a summary of the Wombeyan symposium paper which was drawn from a larger study - in preparation - of the early history of palaeontological discoveries at Wellington Caves in central NSW.
Introductory Paragraphs: Thomas Livingston Mitchell: Scotsman, soldier, mapmaker, Surveyor-General, man of self- importance and ambition, knight of the realm, workaholic, dead at 63. Thomas Mitchell discovered no significant palaeontological site, nor was he a skilled comparative anatomist. Yet he was a central figure in fostering scientific interest in Australian vertebrate fossils in the 1830s and 1840s. It was Thomas Mitchell's fossil bones, examined at Mitchell's request, that began Richard Owen's life-long association with our fossil fauna. It is fitting that we consider both these difficult men in the bicentennial year of the birth of one and the centennial year of the death of the other.
Fossil bones were discovered in a cave near the convict settlement in Wellington Valley by George Ranken in 1830. This was the first significant discovery of fossil bones in the colony. No one in Sydney received the news with more excitement than Thomas Mitchell.
pp.107-110
Julian Tenison Woods, Richard Owen and Ancient Australia
Ann Player
Abstract. Father J. E. Tenison Woods played a small part in the history of vertebrate palaeontology in Australia. In 1866 he recognised that fossil remains discovered near Penola, South Australia, belonged to a large extinct bird related to the emu. The material was described and named by Richard Owen with scant acknowledgement of Woods. Woods played an important role in popularising scientists' discoveries and interpretations of vertebrate fossils.
p. 111
Australian Red Earth And Bones
R.A.L. Osborne
Full Text, no References. Since 1830 naturalists and palaeontologists have been collecting Pleistocene to Recent vertebrate fossils from Australian red cave earth. Red earth, with or without vertebrate fossils, is found in almost every karst area in Australia, in caves developed in both high purity Palaeozoic limestones and in poorly cemented Tertiary calcarenites. It is found in caves on the top of isolated hills and caves in the bottom of valleys. Deposits are known to reach thicknesses of over 12 m.
Various origins, some quite bizarre, have been proposed for this material (Osborne, 1991). The most persistent has been the notion that it consists of insoluble residues derived from solution of the limestone. This is clearly impossible, given the high purity of much of the limestone in which it occurs. The red earth is most likely silt and clay transported from central Australia by the wind during arid phases of the Pleistocene that became preserved in caves and other karst features.
Few fossils older than Pleistocene have been found in Australian caves and it has often been suggested that deposits of cemented red earth and other bone breccia found at or near the surface represent the floors of caves whose roofs had been removed either by collapse and/or erosion (Broom, 1896; Thomson, 1870). In the past this type of explanation would have presented few geological or geomorphic problems. Until the 1980s caves in Australia were regarded by most as having Pleistocene to Recent origins, reflecting the European origin of karst geomorphology in Australia.
Recent work (Osborne & Branagan, 1988; Osborne in press; Webb et. al.,1991), however, suggests that caves, like other landscapes in eastern Australia, are far older, having their origins in Early Tertiary or even Late Cretaceous times. This rules out the possibility of cave roofs being removed by post-Pleistocene erosion and of Pleistocene breccias being older than adjacent caves (Ride, 1960). It raises, however, the interesting and significant possibility of pre-Pleistocene fossils being found in caves.
pp.115-118
Important vertebrate fossils from the palaeontological collections of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Sydney.
Paul M.A. Willis, Susie M. Davies and R. Armstrong L. Osborne
Abstract. A small collection of vertebrate fossils was uncovered during a recent re-organisation of the palaeontological collections of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Sydney. Some of this material is of historical and scientific interest. Fossils from Pleistocene deposits on Clairvaulx Station near Glen Innes were collected by N. Miklouho-Maclay in 1880. A small collection of bones from Wellington Caves may have been made by Edgeworth David in 1900. The Wellington Caves fossils represent taxa of snake, varanid, turtle and bird, previously unknown from that locality. Three small samples of a bone-cave breccia are probably from the Broom Breccia, Wombeyan Caves, and may provide new information on the lithology and petrology of this important site.
pp.119-132
Plumbing the Depths: on caves and the men of Geology
Michael Shortland
Abstract: While caves were important geologically at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they also served as cultural artefacts with political significance. Cave dwellers and industries were common at the time, and miners were leaders in moves for political change. The Reverend William Buckland was a central figure in the early study of caves, fossil bones and coprolites, and his interests were related to the environment of underground workingmen rather than to that of the "gentlemen geologists". Mining geology is more significant in the history of geology than has been accepted to date.
pp.135-136
Richard Owen and the Victorian Museum Movement
Nicolaas Rupke
Abstract: The threads of functionalism and transcendentalism in Richard Owen's work were not intertwined as suggested by most historians, but were kept essentially separate by Owen. The dual nature of his work was the result of his ambition to establish a separate, national museum of natural history, requiring Oxbridge patronage, while at the same time co-operating with working scientists, from Edinburgh-Continental backgrounds, at new metropolitan institutions.