ABSTRACT
In these societies and museums, geology became the central recreation. It was then rising to the heights of social and intellectual fashion as it was affordable, universally available, politically and religiously neutral (in a time of revolutionary concerns), easily preserved and built from the extraordinary remains of animals of mythological proportions. The Yorkshire public was suddenly being exposed to a much deeper past which linked a history of Norman churches and legendary kings, to a time when hyenas and elephants roamed the local hills, and back still further to a time of tropical ferns and giant monsters. Geology could also claim practical value from the discoveries of engineer and mineral surveyor, William Smith, who, in the late eighteenth century, found that rocks had a natural order and that each contained its own peculiar fossils. However, the task of realising the full potential of Smith’s discovery still remained unfinished when Smith arrived in Yorkshire at that moment when the philosophical societies were being born. Possessing unique knowledge, Smith, with his eloquent ward and nephew John Phillips, gave evangelising
lectures to the county’s societies, and utterly transformed them. The rich fossil wealth of the region, so long admired but hardly exploited, was in that moment altered. It now had immense cultural value – fossils were now objects of new knowledge, not simply records of the Biblical Flood or, mythology, or folklore. Most famed of all was the small coastal town of Whitby known for its snakestone ammonites, and its extinct fossil reptiles: the dolphin-like ichthyosaurs, the oldest known crocodiles and the most extraordinary of all animals, living or dead, the long-necked plesiosaurs. However, most of these still lay in the cliffs; there were no public displays.
