38 Facts About William Buckland

William Buckland DD, FRS was an English theologian, geologist and palaeontologist.

William Buckland pioneered the use of fossilised faeces in reconstructing ecosystems, coining the term coprolites.

William Buckland followed the Gap Theory in interpreting the biblical account of Genesis as two widely separated episodes of creation.

Early in his career William Buckland believed he had found evidence of the biblical flood, but later saw that the glaciation theory of Louis Agassiz gave a better explanation, and played a significant role in promoting it.

William Buckland served as Dean of Westminster from 1845 until his death 1856.

William Buckland was born at Axminster in Devon and, as a child, would accompany his father, the Rector of Templeton and Trusham, on his walks where interest in road improvements led to collecting fossil shells, including ammonites, from the Early Jurassic Lias rocks exposed in local quarries.

William Buckland was educated first at Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon, and then at Winchester College, from where he won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, matriculating in 1801 and graduating BA in 1805.

William Buckland attended lectures of John Kidd on mineralogy and chemistry, developed an interest in geology, and carried out field research on strata during his vacations.

William Buckland went on to obtain his MA degree in 1808, became a Fellow of Corpus Christi in 1809, and was ordained as a priest.

William Buckland continued to make frequent geological excursions, on horseback, to various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

In 1813, William Buckland was appointed Reader in mineralogy, in succession to John Kidd, giving lively and popular lectures with increasing emphasis on geology and palaeontology.

In 1818, William Buckland was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

At a time when others were coming under the opposing influence of James Hutton's theory of uniformitarianism, William 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.

William 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.

However, over the next decade as geology continued to progress William Buckland changed his mind.

William Buckland continued to live in Corpus Christi College and, in 1824, he became president of the Geological Society of London.

In 1825, William Buckland was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

William Buckland continued to assist him in his work, as well as having nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood.

On 18 January 1823 William 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.

William Buckland noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilised fish bones and scales, and sometimes bones from small ichthyosaurs.

William Buckland coined the name coprolite for them; the name came to be the general name for all fossilised faeces.

William Buckland 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.

William Buckland 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.

William Buckland discussed other similar objects found in other formations, including the fossilised hyena dung he had found in Kirkdale Cave.

William 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.

In 1832 William Buckland presided over the second meeting of the British Association, which was then held at Oxford.

William 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".

William Buckland's 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.

William Buckland was convinced and was reminded of what he had seen in Scotland, Wales and northern England but had previously attributed to the Flood.

In that year William 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.

Around the end of 1850, William Buckland contracted a disorder of the neck and brain, and died of it in 1856.

The plot for William Buckland's grave had been reserved, but when the gravedigger set to work, it was found that an outcrop of solid Jurassic limestone lay just below ground level and explosives had to be used for excavation.

William Buckland preferred to do his field palaeontology and geological work wearing an academic gown.

William Buckland was followed in this hobby by his son Frank.

One story recounted by Peter Lund Simmonds in 1859 reports that William Buckland served soup to his guests before claiming that it was an alligator that he had dissected earlier that day, to the guests significant discomfort.

William Buckland was incited more by a craving for notoriety, which sometimes made him act like a buffoon, than by a love of science.

In 1846, William Buckland was rector of St Nicholas in Islip and is commemorated on a plaque in the south aisle of the church and the "East Window" was dedicated to the memory of Buckland and his wife in 1861.

The Inupiat village of Buckland in Alaska's Northwest Arctic Borough takes its English name from William Buckland, being named by Royal Navy officer Frederick William Beechey in 1826.