Who he was
A clergyman and geologist, Reader in Mineralogy and Geology at the University of Oxford. When Henry Duncan wrote to him about the Scottish footprints, he at first doubted they were footprints at all. The casts Duncan sent changed his mind.
Tortoises on pastry
He walked a crocodile over soft pie crust, then his own tortoises over pie crust, wet sand and soft clay. In December 1827 he wrote to Duncan that he had little or no doubt tortoises made the fossil tracks. He guessed ancient tortoises moved faster than his own "dull torpid prisoners".
The dough party
On January 19, 1828, he repeated the trial at the London home of the geologist Roderick Murchison, before a room of scientists. The tortoises would not move, even when he flicked their tails, because they had stuck fast in the dough. A young guest, John Murray, wrote that many who came to scoff went home more ready to believe.
Read the sources
- Duncan, An account of the tracks and footmarks of animals found impressed on sandstone in the quarry of Corncockle Muir · Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1831)
- History of ichnology: the correspondence between the Reverend Henry Duncan and the Reverend William Buckland · Ichnos (2007)
- John Murray III, 1808–1892: a brief memoir (1919), with his letter of January 23, 1828
- Gordon, The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland (1894)