William ConybeareBorn 7 Jun 1787; died 12 Aug 1857 at age 70. William Daniel Conybeare was an English geologist, palaeontologist and clergyman who, published the classic and influential workOutlines of the Geology of England and Wales(1822). This was an enlargement and improvement of an earlier work by William Phillips. In the descriptions, fossils were used to date sedimentary strata, and the stratigraphy was detailed for the British rocks of the Carboniferous Period (280-345 million years ago). Conybeare was one of the first to use geological cross-sections. He described and reconstructed saurian fossils supplied by Mary Anningof Lyme Regis, including the plesiosaur (“almost lizard”), which he regarded as a link between the ichthyosaur and the crocodiles. He collaborated with William Buckland, to write on the coalfields of the Bristol area. They were both members ofthe Oxford School of Geology.« |
