A shocking assortment of over 700
fowl fossils has been bequeathed to Nationwide Museums Scotland. Collected in
Essex by Michael Daniels, the fossils date from 54-56 million years in the past, the
starting of the Eocene interval. They symbolize the early levels within the
evolution of contemporary birds and include many species that are new to science. Andrew
Kitchener, our Principal Curator of Vertebrates and Michael’s good friend, tells us
extra in regards to the fossils, their significance, and the devoted man behind such
an vital assortment.
“Please are you able to
present me your assortment of Eocene
birds?”
This was the
query that greeted me once I first met Michael Daniels greater than 25 years
in the past. Visiting the museum together with his spouse Pam and his daughter Caroline, this
assembly can be the start of a protracted friendship and long-term
correspondence.
My reply was, “Properly I might like to, however we don’t have any.” Michael proceeded to inform me about his outstanding assortment of a number of hundred skeletons and half skeletons that he had found in nodules of the London Clay, which had eroded out of the cliffs at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex.
In later years,
I visited Michael and Pam at their house and acquired to see the gathering in its
numerous drawers and containers in his examine. I used to be astonished on the wonderful
number of specimens of all styles and sizes. Most of the bones have been minuscule,
requiring nice endurance and ability to extract from their substrate.
Work is now
underway to completely doc and describe the gathering. Two papers have already
been revealed describing new species. One is a falcon-like fowl and the opposite is
a diver or loon. Consultants consider the gathering might yield not less than 50 new
species as soon as analysis is accomplished.
However how did this
assortment come about? Born in Whitstable, Kent in 1931, Michael had a spread
of jobs over time, till he turned a self-employed cupboard maker and
locksmith. However his one fixed ardour was palaeontology, which took him to
varied fossil websites exterior London and additional afield in southern England from
his house at Loughton close to Epping Forest.
Michael had a
knack to be in the proper place on the proper time. This led to his deal with a
slim Eocene horizon containing 54-million-year-old fowl bones at
Walton-on-the-Naze. Beforehand, solely very occasional stray bones had been discovered
there, however Michael found tons of of more-or-less full skeletons. They
ranged in dimension from the fragmentary bones of a big falcon ancestor (comparable
in look to a predatory phorusrhacid or terror
fowl) to tiny hummingbird-sized skeletons of a swift.
Michael estimated that he drove 27,000 miles and walked 1,590 miles on 640 subject visits to Walton-on-the-Naze to gather 15 tonnes of London Clay! He then took one other 600 hours or 150 days to painstakingly put together round 700 fossil fowl skeletons.
Motorway improvement within the mid-Seventies of motorways not removed from Michael’s Loughton house uncovered these Eocene beds inland. His eager commentary within the subject attracted Michael to small pockets of fabric most individuals wouldn’t see in in any other case seemingly unremarkable clay beds. He discovered tons of of fossils preserved in lumps of clay that had eroded out of the Naze cliffs, however that was solely the beginning of the method.
Extracting,
processing, sieving and drying the residues have been painstaking duties. Separating
the related finds and marrying collectively fragments into some coherence concerned
his watchmaker-like expertise, a binocular microscope, probes and tweezers. He was
even in a position to extract the middle-ear bones of tiny birds!
An unbiased, strong-willed and largely self-taught palaeontologist, Michael took nice pleasure in his assortment, which he documented and analysed in nice element. He sourced the skeletons of dwelling fowl species to assist him establish the fossil specimens.
Michael
developed his personal system of 70 avian skeletal characters (with a complete of 270
doable standards) to attain every skeleton and present how comparable it was to a
dwelling fowl species. Regardless of this, many birds have been troublesome to categorise
as a result of they originated from close to the start of the fashionable evolutionary
radiation of birds and infrequently have characters blended collectively that at the moment are discovered
in numerous trendy fowl households.
Within the Eocene,
the local weather was a lot hotter than right now. In response to a latest examine, world
imply annual floor temperatures have been 13°C hotter than late twentieth century
temperatures. The fauna from this web site could due to this fact have vital classes for
right now’s world local weather change. Given this hotter local weather within the Eocene, it’s
maybe not shocking that the previous large variety of fowl species at
Walton-on-the-Naze is extra like what you’ll see in an Amazonian rainforest
than the Essex of right now.
Michael
puzzled whether or not a doable disaster brought about the mass avian mortality at this
web site. He explored volcanic proof and the potential for an asteroid strike. Michael
was notably within the origin of some doable glass-like tektites
he discovered on the Naze, which could be proof of this impression disaster.
Hopefully additional analysis can settle this query utilizing the small samples of tektites
within the assortment.
The significance
of Michael’s assortment can’t be underestimated. Each within the UK, the place there
is not any comparable web site for avian fossils, and additional afield. Different bird-rich
websites embody Inexperienced River, Wyoming, USA; Messel in Germany, additionally of Eocene age;
and Liaoning, China, which dates to the sooner Cretaceous interval. What makes
the Naze fossil birds so vital is that they’re preserved in three
dimensions (at different key localities they’re squashed flat as a result of fowl bones
are so mild and fragile). Additionally they symbolize the early levels within the
evolutionary radiation of contemporary birds.
As you may
think about, there was eager curiosity in offering a everlasting house for the
assortment from a number of of the world’s main pure historical past museums over the
years. Michael resisted all advances. It was solely in early 2021 that he lastly
determined that he would bequeath his outstanding assortment to Nationwide Museums
Scotland.
We introduced the gathering to Edinburgh on 11 November, having spent a really lengthy day rigorously packing every specimen. Sadly, Michael died unexpectedly a few months earlier than this on 27 September 2021. It was a tragic activity to be eradicating Michael’s assortment from his now empty house, however I’m positive he was glad that he had made the choice.
We’re very
proud and honoured to host this assortment. It should present many years of analysis
curiosity with many new species of fossil fowl awaiting a proper scientific
description. However the assortment additionally offers a chance to check how this
broad variety of birds matches into the broader Eocene ecosystem of what we now
name Walton-on-the-Naze. The truth that the gathering is now with us right here at
Nationwide Museums Scotland can be of curiosity to palaeontologists throughout the
world.
The standard of Michael’s assortment meant that he’d already labored with a number of of the world’s main avian palaeontologists. For instance, he collaborated with Dr Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Analysis Institute in Frankfurt am Foremost on new fowl species, such because the parrot-like passerine kin from the Inexperienced River, Messel and Walton-on-the Naze. Gerald has since been to see the fossils in our Nationwide Museums Assortment Centre to proceed engaged on them.
Sir David
Attenborough (anonymously) described Michael’s assortment in The Lifetime of Birds. He singled out the
“outstanding web site” at Walton-on-the-Naze for offering “astonishing proof of
this swift and wealthy improvement” of fowl evolution “yielding over 600
specimens of historical extinct birds.”
The extent of
this outstanding fossil assemblage is essentially down to 1 man’s dedication,
which Michael summed up in his personal phrases in a brief pencil observe discovered lately:
“Only a scrap of bone that proved to be fowl … that unusual however obligatory
wherewithal and aspect of obsessive crankiness to maintain going and proceed
trying to find 33 years”.
Analysis on and curation of the gathering has already begun. Preserve a glance out for a lot of extra new species of Eocene fossil fowl showing within the palaeontological literature as researchers from around the globe become familiar with the big variety of Michael Daniels’ outstanding assortment.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank David Bain for his assist and hospitality within the switch of Michael’s assortment to the Nationwide Museum of Scotland. I might additionally prefer to thank David and Invoice George for sharing a lot of the biographical data which I’ve reproduced on this weblog.
