Christopher Duffin

Ichthyocolla is a collagen-rich medicinal simple, originally derived from many parts of the parent fi sh, but more commonly restricted to Acipenseriform swim bladders imported from Russia in early modern times. Used to treat headache, tetanus and leprosy in classical times, the medieval Arabic tradition saw it utilised against haemorrhoids. The colloidal nature of the processed material was exploited in early modern medicine where it was used to treat haemorrhoids, leucorrhoea, diarrhoea, and dysentery. Remarkable for its adhesive properties, it was used topically to bind the separated lips of wounds together, to stabilise broken ribs, and in medicinal plasters.

Joseph Clutton (c.1695-1743) was a Georgian apothecary
and businessman who produced the Oglander materia
medica cabinet. A committed Quaker, he ventured
into print on two occasions. Th e fi rst (1729) concerned
a proprietary febrifugal tincture. Th e second (1736) examined
the infamous antimonial ‘Pill and Drop’ promoted
by the quack Joshua Ward (1685-1761). Th is
drew Clutton into a protracted war of words with Ward
and his brother in the Grub Street Journal. Clutton was
also a keen botanist. Following his death, his wife Mary
and then his son Morris continued the business, which
was eventually fully owned by Joseph’s former apprentice,
Th omas Corbyn (1711-1791).

The tusks of the Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) are Galenical simples of rather minor importance, often forming part of the zoological component of material medica cabinets and collections from the early eighteenth century. Imported into Britain from Germany, they were rendered into a powder and combined with additional ingredients in relatively uncomplicated polypharmaceutical preparations, usually delivered internally in a liquid medium. Somewhat restricted in their application, powdered tusks were incorporated into prescriptions for diseases of the throat and respiratory system, notably peritonsillar abscesses (quinsy), pleurisy and pneumonia. They may also have been employed as an antispasmodic and antihysteric.

The very small teeth of a new petalodont chondrichthyan are described from the Lower Carboniferous Eyam Limestone Formation (Peak Limestone Group, Carboniferous Limestone Supergroup; Brigantian, Early Carboniferous) of Derbyshire. Cypripediodens cristatus gen. et sp. nov. belongs to the Family Janassidae on the basis of the angle formed between the base and the crown. Presumed lower symphyseal teeth are Fissodus-like, possessing two labial cusps, whilst the rest of the dentition is relatively homodont. Individual crowns measure up to 1.3 mm labiolingually and possess a single labial cusp with virtually circular cross-section, separated from a prominent lingual cusp with circumferential cristae from which it is separated by a central trough.

The mineraloid amber is discussed here as part of palaeontological pharmacology. A popular galenical, its use expanded dramatically with the post-Paracelsian rise of iatrochemistry; Salts, Oils, Tinctures, and Powers of Amber were produced by means of sublimation, distillation and rectification. With a few exceptions, other fossils were limited in their application as galenical simples by classical, medieval and folklore traditions and a pre-Paracelsian view of the Doctrine of Signatures. The various fossil groups which have been employed therapeutically are briefly reviewed.

Sir Walter Raleigh, the Tudor explorer and adventurer, was arrested for treason by James I following the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. A stay of execution was granted and he was sent to the Tower of London. Th ere he was able to undertake scientifi c investigations. He owned a small medicine chest, and this may have been with him in the Tower. Th e chest survives and is on display in a Lisbon museum. Th is paper presents a description of the chest and its possible use, and discusses the evidence for establishing its provenance. It is concluded that its origin and initial ownership are beyond doubt.

A B S T R A C T The Eyam Limestone Formation of Steeplehouse Quarry, Wirksworth, Derbyshire, UK yields a diverse assemblage of Lower Carboniferous vertebrate remains. The assemblage is dominated by dermal denticles of the enigmatic selachian Petrodus patelliformis M'Coy, 1848, but also contains teeth of petalodonts, hybodonts and neoselachians. Actinopterygian remains also occur. The assemblage has yielded the earliest Neoselachian, Cooleyella fordi (Duffin and Ward, 1983) and the earliest British lonchidiid, Reesodus wirksworthensis (Duffin 1985). The first occurrence of the enigmatic spiny shark Acanthorhachis (Listracanthidae) is reported from the Viséan, extending its range back some 10 million years. Associated invertebrate remains and sedimentological data indicates a thriving fore-reef environment, deposited in a low energy off-reef setting. The vertebrate remains are well preserved with little abrasion, indicating short transport distances. Conodont elements indicating a late Brigantian age (Early Carboniferous, Viséan) have unusual and extensive euhedral apatite overgrowths.

The Late Triassic Rhaetian stage is perhaps best known in southwest Britain for the bone beds of the Westbury Formation, but there are other fossil-rich horizons within this and the underlying Blue Anchor Formation. Samples from a borehole drilled at the Filton West Chord, and collected from exposures near Bristol Parkway railway station, have yielded significant fossil material from both of these formations. The assemblage recovered from the Blue Anchor Formation is similar to those from the lower Westbury Formation, yielding roughly equal proportions of chondrichthyans and osteichthyans. Assemblages recovered from the Westbury Formation are typical of those from the upper Westbury Formation, in being dominated by osteichthyans. The borehole samples have produced the first recorded evidence of crinoids in the British Triassic, and the first evidence of coleoid cephalopods, in the form of grasping hooklets, from the Rhaetian, and indeed the first from the British Triassic.

The isolated teeth of a new euselachian shark Artiodus prominens Ivanov and Duffin gen. et sp. nov. have been found in the Artinskian Stage (Early Permian) of Krasnoufimskie Klyuchiki quarry (Sverdlovsk Region, Middle Urals, Russia). The teeth of Artiodus possess a multicuspid orthodont crown with from four to nine triangular cusps; prominent labial projection terminating in a large round tubercle; distinct ornamentation from straight or recurved cristae; oval or semilu-nar, elongate, considerably vascularized base; dense vascular network formed of transverse horizontal, ascending, short secondary and semicircular canals. The teeth of the new taxon otherwise most closely resemble the teeth of some prot-acrodontid and sphenacanthid euselachians possessing a protacrodont-type crown, but differ from the teeth of all other known euselachians in the unique structure of the labial projection. The studied teeth vary in crown and base morphology , and three tooth morphotypes can be distinguished in the collection reflecting a moderate degree of linear gradient monognathic heterodonty. The range of morphologies otherwise displayed by the collection of teeth shows the greatest similarity to that described for the dentitions of relatively high-crowned hybodontids from the Mesozoic. The internal structure of the teeth, including their vascularization system is reconstructed using microtomography. The highest chon-drichthyan taxonomic diversity is found in the Artinskian, especially from the localities of the Middle and South Urals.

Otoliths, chalky granules embedded in the inner ear, might seem an unusual choice for a gem. Examples have been mounted in amuletic necklaces and pendants since pre-Roman times, supposedly giving the added benefit of protection from maritime disaster, and staving off headaches.

The late Middle Jurassic (Callovian) Peterborough Member of the Oxford Clay Formation of eastern England yields a rich variety of marine vertebrate fossils, including a diverse assemblage of neoselachian
elasmobranchs. Here we report the first record of the small Jurassic orectolobiform shark Akaimia Rees, 2010, otherwise known only from Poland and Germany, from the British Jurassic, together with an unusual, undetermined dermal denticle. The material comes from exposures in Cambridgeshire, eastern England. We refer the new specimens of Akaimia to the new taxon A. myriacuspis sp. nov., and provide a revised diagnosis for the genus.

The Rhaetian marine transgression, which occurred across Europe in the latest Triassic, 205.5 Ma, famously deposited one or more bone beds. Attention has generally focused on the basal bone bed alone,
but here we explore this bed, and a stratigraphically higher bone bed at the top of the Westbury Formation, and compare the faunas. The Rhaetian at Hampstead Farm Quarry, Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, UK, has produced more than 26,000 identifiable microvertebrate remains, including teeth and scales of chondrichthyan and osteichthyan fishes, as well as vertebrae of sharks, bony fishes,
ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs. The higher bone bed (‘bed 9’) contains more small specimens than the basal bone bed, and they are also less abraded, suggesting less transport. Both bone beds yield largely
the same taxa, but Rhomphaiodon minor and rare Vallisia coppi and Sargodon tomicus are found only in the basal bone bed. Duffinselache is reported only from units above the basal bone bed, but low in the
Westbury Formation, and durophagous teeth only from two horizons. Four out of nine chondrichthyan species are common to both bone beds, whereas Rhomphaiodon minor and Ceratodus are absent, and
hybodonts in general are rarer, in bed 9. Bed 9 is the richer source of marine reptile remains, including ichthyosaur teeth, jaw fragments, vertebrae, rare plesiosaur teeth and vertebrae, and a few Pachystropheus vertebrae and limb bones. Whereas the basal bone bed represents considerable transport and possible storm bed deposition associated with the onset of the Rhaetian Transgression, bed 9 was deposited under a lower energy regime.

2016. The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fissure faunas from Bristol and South Wales: Stratigraphy and setting. Palaeontologia Polonica 67, 257–287. The famous vertebrate-bearing fissures of the Bristol area in southwest England and in south Wales were traditionally referred to " upland " environmental settings, and assigned an overall time range of some 60 Myr; we reject both of these viewpoints. In terms of the environmental setting, based upon the evidence of palaeogeography, sediments, and fossils, we show that all the Triassic-aged fissures were near-coastal and embedded in karst formed on palaeo-islands in a subtropical archipelago. Further, the dates of these fissure fills in both regions do not span the Carnian to Rhaetian, as commonly supposed, but instead they are probably all Rhaetian. We update information on the Charles Moore Holwell " Microlestes " fissure assemblage and demonstrate that the marine fauna confirms a Rhaetian age. As proposed by previous authors , younger fissure fills around the St. Brides area of South Wales were also formed on an island, but during the Hettangian–Sinemurian. The youngest fissure deposit in the region is Pliensbachian. The age range of the fissures thus shrinks to c. 20 Myr, and the first episode of tetrapod fissure infilling shifts from the time of the Carnian " pluvial " episode, to the early Rhaetian, when western Europe was undergoing major rifting associated with the beginning of the opening of the North Atlantic, and when the Rhaetian sea flooded over landscapes that had long been purely terrestrial and arid. We recognise clear changes in the faunal composition of the terrestrial vertebrate biota from the early Rhaetian, dominated by reptile taxa, with some mammaliamorphs, that then declined rapidly in diversity before the Hettangian. This herpe-tofauna was followed by three faunal assemblages in the Early Jurassic of St. Brides which became increasingly diverse following the end-Triassic mass extinction; each had prominent mammaliamorphs as well as high numbers, but few species, of rhynchocephalians.

Spectacular whole-bodied and articulated Mesozoic chimaeroid fossils are known from the Upper Jurassic Plattenkalk Lagerstatten of Southern Germany: the Upper Kimmeridgian of Nusplingen (Wuerttemberg) and the Upper Kimmeridgian and Lower Tithonian of the Solnhofen Archipelago (Bavaria). Despite high fidelity preservation, usually including elements of the musculature, notochordal sheath, fin skeletons, and elements of the lateral line sensory canal system, only the skeleton of Ischyodus quenstedti Wagner, 1857, has been studied in detail (by G. Heimberg as Ischyodus schuebleri, in 1949). Former skeletal reconstructions show a ChimaeraAike general body design for Ischyodus with a tapered rather than a plough-shaped snout, a high first dorsal fin supported by a long, robust and curved fin spine, a relatively large frontal clasper, probably a low second dorsal fin and a leptocercal tail - this arrangement is evocative of the body plans of Recent chimaerids (Chimaera, Hydrolagus). No re...