Rejection of flood geology and Kirkdale Cave drew this cartoon of Buckland poking his head into a prehistoric hyaena den in 1822 to celebrate Buckland's ground breaking analysis of the fossils found in Kirkdale Cave. In 1818, Buckland was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society. That year he persuaded
the Prince Regent to endow an additional Readership, this time in Geology and he became the first holder of the new appointment, delivering his inaugural address on 15 May 1819. This was published in 1820 as
Vindiciæ Geologiæ; or the Connexion of Geology with Religion explained, both justifying the new science of geology and reconciling geological evidence with the
biblical accounts of
creation and
Noah's Flood. At a time when others were coming under the opposing influence of
James Hutton's theory of
uniformitarianism, Buckland developed a new hypothesis that the word "beginning" in
Genesis meant an undefined period between the origin of the earth and the creation of its current inhabitants, during which a long series of extinctions and successive creations of new kinds of plants and animals had occurred. Thus, his
catastrophism theory incorporated a version of
Old Earth creationism or
Gap creationism. Buckland believed in a global deluge during the time of Noah but was not a supporter of
flood geology as he believed that only a small amount of the strata could have been formed in the single year occupied by the deluge. From his investigations of fossil bones at
Kirkdale Cave, in
Yorkshire, he concluded that the cave had actually been inhabited by
hyaenas in antediluvian times, and that the fossils were the remains of these hyaenas and the animals they had eaten, rather than being remains of animals that had perished in the Flood and then carried from the tropics by the surging waters, as he and others had at first thought. In 1822 he wrote: It must already appear probable, from the facts above described, particularly from the comminuted state and apparently gnawed condition of the bones, that the cave in Kirkdale was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den of hyaenas, and that they dragged into its recesses the other animal bodies whose remains are found mixed indiscriminately with their own: this conjecture is rendered almost certain by the discovery I made, of many small balls of the solid calcareous excrement of an animal that had fed on bones... It was at first sight recognised by the keeper of the Menagerie at Exeter Change, as resembling, in both form and appearance, the faeces of the spotted or cape hyaena, which he stated to be greedy of bones beyond all other beasts in his care. While criticised by some, Buckland's analysis of Kirkland Cave and other bone caves was widely seen as a model for how careful analysis could be used to reconstruct the Earth's past, and the Royal Society awarded Buckland the
Copley Medal in 1822 for his paper on Kirkdale Cave. At the presentation the society's president,
Humphry Davy, said: by these inquiries, a distinct epoch has, as it were, been established in the history of the revolutions of our globe: a point fixed from which our researches may be pursued through the immensity of ages, and the records of animate nature, as it were, carried back to the time of the creation. which was published in 1823 and became a best seller. However, over the next decade as geology continued to progress Buckland changed his mind. In his famous Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1836, he acknowledged that the biblical account of Noah's flood could not be confirmed using geological evidence. By 1840 he was very actively promoting the view that what had been interpreted as evidence of the 'Universal Deluge' two decades earlier, and subsequently of deep submergence by a new generation of geologists such as Charles Lyell, was in fact evidence of a major glaciation.
Megalosaurus He continued to live in Corpus Christi College and, in 1824, he became
president of the Geological Society of London. Here he announced the discovery, at
Stonesfield, of fossil bones of a giant
reptile which he named
Megalosaurus ('great lizard') and wrote the first full account of what would later be called a
dinosaur. In 1825, Buckland was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That year he resigned his college fellowship: he planned to
take up the living of
Stoke Charity in
Hampshire but, before he could take up the appointment, he was made a
Canon of
Christ Church, a rich reward for academic distinction without serious administrative responsibilities.
Marriage In December 1825 he married
Mary Morland of
Abingdon, Oxfordshire, an accomplished illustrator and collector of
fossils. Their
honeymoon was a year touring Europe, with visits to famous
geologists and geological sites. She continued to assist him in his work, as well as having nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. His son
Frank Buckland became a well known practical naturalist, author, and Inspector of Salmon Fisheries. On one occasion, Mary helped him decipher footmarks found in a slab of sandstone by covering the kitchen table with paste, while he fetched their pet
tortoise and confirmed his intuition, that tortoise footprints matched the fossil marks. His daughter, author Elizabeth Oke Buckland Gordon, wrote a
biography of her father that included appendices of positions held by Buckland, his membership in professional societies, and an index of his publications.
The Red Lady of Paviland On 18 January 1823 Buckland walked into
Paviland Cave in south Wales, where he discovered a skeleton which he named the
Red Lady of Paviland, as he at first supposed it to be the remains of a local prostitute. Although Buckland found the skeleton in Paviland Cave in the same strata as the bones of extinct mammals (including
mammoth), Buckland shared the view of
Georges Cuvier that no humans had coexisted with any extinct animals, and he attributed the skeleton's presence there to a grave having been dug in historical times, possibly by the same people who had constructed some nearby pre-Roman fortifications, into the older layers. Carbon-data tests have since dated the
skeleton, now known to be male as from circa 33,000
years before present (BP). It is the oldest
anatomically modern human found in the United Kingdom.
Coprolites and the Liassic food chain – A more Ancient
Dorset'', 1830 watercolour by
Henry De la Beche, based on Buckland's account of
Mary Anning's discoveries The fossil hunter
Mary Anning noticed that stony objects known as "
bezoar stones" were often found in the abdominal region of
ichthyosaur skeletons found in the
Lias formation at
Lyme Regis. She also noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilised fish bones and scales, and sometimes bones from small
ichthyosaurs. These observations by Anning led Buckland to propose in 1829 that the stones were fossilised faeces. He coined the name
coprolite for them; the name came to be the general name for all fossilised faeces. Buckland also concluded that the spiral markings on the fossils indicated that ichthyosaurs had spiral ridges in their intestines similar to those of modern
sharks, and that some of these
coprolites were black because the ichthyosaur had ingested
ink sacs from
belemnites. He wrote a vivid description of the Liassic food chain based on these observations, which would inspire
Henry De la Beche to paint
Duria Antiquior, the first pictorial representation of a scene from the distant past. After De le Beche had a lithographic print made based on his original
watercolour, Buckland kept a supply of the prints on hand to circulate at his lectures. He also discussed other similar objects found in other formations, including the fossilised hyena dung he had found in Kirkdale Cave. He concluded: In all these various formations our Coprolites form records of warfare, waged by successive generations of inhabitants of our planet on one another: the imperishable phosphate of lime, derived from their digested skeletons, has become embalmed in the substance and foundations of the everlasting hills; and the general law of Nature which bids all to eat and be eaten in their turn, is shown to have been co-extensive with animal existence on our globe; the
Carnivora in each period of the world's history fulfilling their destined office, – to check excess in the progress of life, and maintain the balance of creation. Buckland had been helping and encouraging
Roderick Murchison for some years, and in 1831 was able to suggest a good starting point in
South Wales for Murchison's researches into the rocks beneath the secondary strata associated with the
age of reptiles. Murchison would later name these older strata, characterised by marine
invertebrate fossils, as
Silurian, after a tribe that had lived in that area centuries earlier. In 1832 Buckland presided over the second meeting of the
British Association, which was then held at Oxford.
Bridgewater Treatise Buckland was commissioned to contribute one of the set of eight
Bridgewater Treatises, "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation". This took him almost five years' work and was published in 1836 with the title
Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology. His volume included a detailed compendium of his theories of day-age,
gap theory and a form of
progressive creationism where
faunal succession revealed by the fossil record was explained by a series of successive
divine creations that prepared the earth for humans. In the introduction he expressed the
argument from design by asserting that the families and
phyla of biology were "clusters of contrivance": The myriads of petrified Remains which are disclosed by the researches of Geology all tend to prove that our Planet has been occupied in times preceding the Creation of the Human Race, by extinct species of Animals and Vegetables, made up, like living Organic Bodies, of 'Clusters of Contrivances,' which demonstrate the exercise of stupendous Intelligence and Power. They further show that these extinct forms of Organic Life were so closely allied, by Unity in the principles of their construction, to Classes, Orders, and Families, which make up the existing Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, that they not only afford an argument of surpassing force, against the doctrines of the Atheist and Polytheist; but supply a chain of connected evidence, amounting to demonstration, of the continuous Being, and of many of the highest Attributes of the One Living and True God. Following
Charles Darwin's return from the
Beagle voyage, Buckland discussed with him the
Galapagos land iguanas and
Marine iguanas. He subsequently recommended Darwin's paper on the role of
earthworms in
soil formation for publication, praising it as "a new & important theory to explain Phenomena of universal occurrence on the surface of the Earth—in fact a new Geological Power", while rightly rejecting Darwin's suggestion that chalkland could have been formed in a similar way.
Glaciation theory By this time Buckland was a prominent and influential scientific celebrity and a friend of the
Tory prime minister, Sir
Robert Peel. In co-operation with
Adam Sedgwick and
Charles Lyell, he prepared the report leading to the establishment of the
Geological Survey of Great Britain. Having become interested in the theory of
Louis Agassiz, that polished and striated rocks as well as transported material, had been caused by ancient
glaciers, he travelled to Switzerland, in 1838, to meet Agassiz and see for himself. He was convinced and was reminded of what he had seen in Scotland, Wales and northern England but had previously attributed to the Flood. When Agassiz came to Britain for the
Glasgow meeting of the British Association, in 1840, they went on an extended tour of Scotland and found evidence there of former glaciation. In that year Buckland had become president of the Geological Society again and, despite their hostile reaction to his presentation of the theory, he was now satisfied that glaciation had been the origin of much of the surface deposits covering Britain. In 1845 he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel to the vacant
Deanery of Westminster (he succeeded
Samuel Wilberforce). Soon after, he was inducted to the living of
Islip, near Oxford, a preferment attached to the deanery. As Dean and head of Chapter, Buckland was involved in repair and maintenance of
Westminster Abbey and in preaching suitable sermons to the rural population of Islip, while continuing to lecture on geology at Oxford. In 1847, he was appointed a trustee in the
British Museum and, in 1848, he was awarded the
Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London. == Illness and death ==