Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.9357
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    Fossil sea turtle "Chelone pulchriceps"

    Date
    July 1840
    Creator
    Thomas Image (1772 - 1856, British) , Geologist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (painting): 240mm
    width (painting): 163mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > fossil
    Description
    Side view of the fossil head of a sea turtle named by Richard Owen FRS (1804-1892) in 1842. Inscribed below in ink: "Chelone pulchriceps. Owen. No.3. side view”. Not signed or dated.

    The Rev. Thomas Image, Rector of Whepstead, was a fossil collector and Fellow of the Geological Society. His collection was sold to the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge.

    This specimen was commented upon by Richard Owen in A history of British fossil reptiles ...(1849), section II chapter 1, p.162

    "With the exception of a few more or less mutilated mandibles, no parts of the skull of a Chelonian reptile have been, hitherto, discovered in the chalk itself, either at Burham or elsewhere in England ; but I have had the opportunity, through the kindness of the Rev. Thomas Image, M.A., of Whepstead, of examining and comparing the fossil cranium of a small turtle from the green-sand which underlies the chalk. The specimen was discovered near Barnwell, in Cambridgeshire...”

    From papers of the naturalist and geologist Caleb Burrell Rose (1790-1872).
    Associated place
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          > United Kingdom
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