Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology |
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Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology Marie Stopes: paleobotanist at St. John
It is not often that the Geological Survey of Canada considers it
necessary to hire a foreign expert to adjudicate a local paleontological
matter. In 1911 Marie Stopes was brought in as a hired gun to check the
paleobotanical work of Sir William Dawson in St. John, New Brunswick
![Marie Stopes, in a romantic pose looking like the Lady of Shalott, aged 30, about the time she worked on the Fern Ledges fossils. (From Ruth Hall's book - Passionate Crusader: The Life of Marie Stopes.) Marie Stopes, in a romantic pose looking like the Lady of Shalott, aged 30, about the time she worked on the Fern Ledges fossils. (From Ruth Hall's book - Passionate Crusader: The Life of Marie Stopes.)](/web/20061103045851im_/http://www.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/paleochron/images/mariest.jpg) Marie Stopes, in a romantic pose looking like the Lady of Shalott, aged 30, about the time she worked on the Fern Ledges fossils.
(From Ruth Hall's book - Passionate Crusader: The Life of Marie Stopes.) |
In 1940, a Mr. J.F. Coates, M.P. from New South Wales gave a speech in
the Australian Parliament that included this statement: "The Empire
today has three enemies -- all from Munich. One is Hitler, the other
Goebbels, and the third that doctor of German philosophy and science --
Dr. Marie Stopes. The greatest of these is Marie Stopes". Why such
enmity? Her German doctorate was in the field of paleobotany -- not
usually a field that provokes vitriolic hate. But Stopes was also the
author of the first sex manuals, Married Love and Wise
Parenthood, and an active promoter of birth control who established
Britain's first family planning clinics in 1921. The Marie Stopes
International now provides reproductive health services in over thirty
countries and, in 1999, she came first in the Guardian's "Women of
the Millennium" poll.
But our interest here is not primarily with Marie Stopes, the birth
control promoter; it is with Marie Stopes, the paleobotanist, who in 1911
was hired by the Geological Survey of Canada to settle a vexing
controversy about the age of plant fossils at "Fern Ledges" near
St. John, New Brunswick. With a Ph.D from Munich and a D.Sc. from London,
this 30-year-old lecturer in botany at the University of Manchester, and
the author of Ancient Plants, was well qualified for this task.
This controversy dated from 1861 when J. William Dawson, the most
respected paleobotanist in Canada declared that the abundant ferns,
seed-ferns and sphenopsids from the "Fern Ledges" locality at
St. John are Devonian in age and among the oldest plants known at that
time.. The associated insect, fishes and amphibian trackways must be
Devonian as well. The presence of insects and amphibians in Devonian rocks
was particularly difficult for many paleontologists to accept because,
previously, their oldest occurrence had been in the Late Carboniferous.
Some paleobotanists claimed that the Coal Age-like plants are
Carboniferous in age.
![A 2 cm-long stem of the sphenopsid plant Calamites was originally collected by Sir William Dawson from Fern Ledges near St. John, New Brunswick. Marie Stopes added a small label, "not Devonian". The specimen is from the Redpath Museum Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c).) A 2 cm-long stem of the sphenopsid plant Calamites was originally collected by Sir William Dawson from Fern Ledges near St. John, New Brunswick. Marie Stopes added a small label, "not Devonian". The specimen is from the Redpath Museum Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c).)](/web/20061103045851im_/http://www.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/paleochron/images/fernledg1.jpg) A 2 cm-long stem of the sphenopsid plant Calamites was originally collected by Sir William Dawson from Fern Ledges near St. John, New Brunswick. Marie Stopes added a small label, "not Devonian". The specimen is from the Redpath Museum Collections.
(Photo by BDEC (c).) |
![A specimen of Sphenopteris collected by Marie Stopes from Fern Ledges. 11 cm high slab from the GSC Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c)) A specimen of Sphenopteris collected by Marie Stopes from Fern Ledges. 11 cm high slab from the GSC Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c))](/web/20061103045851im_/http://www.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/paleochron/images/sphenopt1.jpg) A specimen of Sphenopteris collected by Marie Stopes from Fern Ledges. 11 cm high slab from the GSC Collections.
(Photo by BDEC (c)) |
The Geological Survey of Canada remained aloof in this controversy but,
when Survey geologists began to squabble in public about the ages of
Carboniferous and Devonian rocks in the Maritimes (including those from
"Fern Ledges") the Director could not allow the apparent
scientific harmony of the Survey to be threatened. An independent
scientist, Marie Stopes, was brought in to adjudicate. She examined all
collections of fossil plants, reviewed all previous work and she
described, illustrated and identified about 40 species of plants. Her
memoir, published by the Survey in 1914, could not have been clearer. The
"Fern Ledges" flora is, without question, a standard
Carboniferous flora very similar to Late Carboniferous floras from Cape
Breton Island, Pennsylvania and England. The associated fishes, insects
and amphibians are, of course, also Carboniferous.
Compared to her crusade promoting contraception and family planning,
the earlier work on Canadian fossils by that "doctor of German
paleobotany" was comparatively non-controversial. Still, one wonders
what Sir William Dawson, Presbyterian minister, would have thought of the
sexual revolution initiated by the young woman hired to straighten out his
paleobotanical work at "Fern Ledges".
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