Henry De la Beche
Sir Henry Thomas De la Bèche ( born February 10, 1796 in London, † April 13, 1855 ) was an English geologist.
Life and work
De la Bèche studied after his military service geology and made 1819 a geological journey through Switzerland and Italy. In the same year he became a member of the Royal Society.
Together with William Daniel Conybeare, he carried out geological surveys in England, where he discovered a plesiosaur among others. In 1819 he led on the basis of his research in the Lake Geneva the concept of the thermocline as temperature thermocline in a stratified lake in the scientific jargon. In 1825 he toured Jamaica and examined the geognostical structure of the island.
Henry Thomas de la Bèche set forth geognostical cards and founded the Museum of Practical Geology in London. England owes him a detailed geological exploration and description of the land, which he operated largely at their own expense. As the first director of the company founded by him in 1835, " Geological Survey of Great Britain" (now British Geological Survey ), the first national geological service, he worked for the government.
In 1848 he was ennobled ( Knight). Shortly before his death to him the Wollaston medal was awarded for special achievements in the field of geology.
Duria antiquior
1830 de la Bèche painted the watercolor Duria antiquior - A more Ancient Dorset ( " ancient Royal Dorset "). It is the first reconstruction of a fossil habitat in its entirety, here the Lower Jurassic of the southern English county of Dorset, on the interplay between its different elements of fauna and flora ( paleoecology ). The image was circulated in Victorian England in a number of legal and illegal lithographed copies and almost all painters served as a template for the representations of prehistoric landscapes and biota. In the center of the scene together fighting Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosaurus are with pterodactyls circling about ( Dimorphodon macronyx, macronyx originally described as Pterodactyl ). The reconstruction of these animals goes back to the three most remarkable discoveries of the professional fossil collector Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme Regis in Dorset. Henry de la Bèche, who had spent his childhood in Lyme Regis, to assist in selling copies of his painting with the proceeds the impoverished Anning, who owed the British Geological much. He reconstructed the animals after the then scientific conceptions, but the representation is characterized by a humorous exaggeration. Most eat the manner of a menagerie image huddled on unnatural animals in a small space or be eaten to give some feces from - a detail that was often omitted from the copies. The portrait was immediately rezipiert also in Germany. The Prussian geologist Leopold von Buch presented Duria antiquior in Berlin already in February 1831 to an audience. The presentation, which has been preserved, show just how clearly the portrait raised new questions about the processes of geological change.
Works
- Geological notes. London 1830
- Sections and views of geological phenomena. 1830
- Geological manual. 1831 ( German Heinrich von Dechen, Berlin 1832)
- Researches in theoretical geology. 1834 ( German, Quedlinburg 1836)
- How to observe. 1835
- Geological observer. 1853 ( German by Ernst Dieffenbach, Braunschweig 1853)