Rare Discoveries at the Booth Museum

Edmontonia Dinosaur, a related species of the Ankylosaurus. Artist impression © Mariana Ruiz Villarreal (wikimedia commons)

Following the visit of a noted academic, a number of the fossils in Brighton Museum’s collections have been found to be preserved parts of armoured dinosaurs (nodosaurids) commonly known as anklyosaurs. Any examples of nodosaurid fossils are rare in the United Kingdom, so to have so many ‘discovered’ at one time is quite exciting.

The discovery started last year when Andy Ottaway, an occasional volunteer at the Booth Museum, came across a fossil he suspected to be part of an Ankylosaur. He contacted his colleague Dr William Blows, an expert on the nodosaurids (armoured dinosaurs) who was interested, but unable to visit at that time.

Dr William Blows

Jumping forward to April 2012, Dr Blows was invited to speak at the Brighton Geological Society meeting at Blatchington Mill. He took the opportunity to visit the Booth Museum collections and look at the possible ankylosaur bone, as well as looking through the other fossils associated with it. The fossil was a part of the collection of Arthur Foster Griffith, an alderman of Brighton, who donated large collections to Brighton Museum, and was involved with the Booth Museum. This particular collection was a large number of specimens from the Cambridge Green Sand formation. The specimens are all identified as belonging to the Upper Albian of the Cretaceous period dating them to between 99.6 and 112 million years old. Although the fossils have no record of when they were collected, it seems reasonable that Griffith, a lifelong Brightonian, may have collected or purchased them whilst at university at Cambridge in the 1870s.

Presacral

The bone initially thought to be part of an ankylosaur was formally identified as the anterior end of a pre-sacral rod. This was explained as a ‘series of fused dorsal vertebrae which is fused to the anterior end of the sacrum’. This pre-sacral rod is combined with the sacrum to form the synsacrum, a characteristic unique to nodosaurid dinosaurs.

Through Dr Blow’s further exploration of the collection, he was also able to identify a number of nodosaurid dermal scutes, which are hard plate scales on the animal’s skin (hence armoured dinosaurs).

Collar

His final discovery was a particularly rare series of fossils making up part of the cervical armour ring that was found around the dorsal surface of an nodosaurid neck. These had all been labelled simply as ‘deinosaurian’.

Dr Blows now hopes to publish our specimens as part of a scientific paper, giving our collections wider exposure in the scientific community. His talk to the Geological Society was also a great success and the nodosaurid skull casts he brought along as props were fascinating.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

At Work With…

… Gerald Legg, Keeper of Natural Sciences

Fossil Human Teeth

We get all kinds of enquiries and this one was particularly unusual. A member of the public ‘phoned saying they had hundreds of teeth embedded in stone in their garden, forming part of the foundations of their patio which was being dug-up. ‘Bring some in and we’ll look at them for you’.

Chunk of old patio base with embedded 'teeth'

A strong carrier bag duly arrived with three large chunks of ‘rock’ in which were embedded what appeared to be human teeth – by the hundred. With a little imagination all kinds of ghoulish images could come to mind!

On close examination the teeth appeared to be very uniform and incomplete – they had no roots, but they did have a hole in them; very strange. Perhaps they were for making primitive necklaces or other jewellery; nothing so obvious. A little local history research revealed that one of the world’s largest manufacturers of artificial teeth implants had once had a factory in Brighton very close to where the enquirer lived: Dentsply.

On June 23, 1899 The Dentist’s Supply Company of New York was formally chartered by the state of New York. Secretary of State John T. McDonough signed the papers in Albany. Within a month, The Dentist’s Supply Company of New York was serving dental retail outlets and manufacturing its first product, artificial teeth.

Close up of some 'teeth'

Called 20th Century Teeth, in honour of the coming century, these platinum pin teeth were considered revolutionary. Made of porcelain, using techniques developed and perfected by George Whitely, 20th Century Teeth had platinum pins baked into the porcelain structure to hold them in place within the dental base. This was hailed as a major improvement in the design and manufacture of teeth and dentures.

In typical dentures of that day, teeth broke off from the dental base when the pressure of chewing and biting created internal stresses. After the anchors were baked into the teeth, pins were soldered to the anchors to hold the teeth in place. The strength of 20th Century Teeth earned The Dentist’s Supply Company a reputation for high quality goods. A century later, the company founded on the strength of one product is DENTSPLY International, a company that serves the world’s dental needs.

Artificial Tooth

In 1931, Trubyte was introduced as a revolutionary product line – ‘New Trubyte Teeth’. New Trubyte Teeth masterfully combined aesthetics with function and performance. This ‘harmony of form’ earned Trubyte a reputation for being the finest artificial teeth in the world. In this era, Trubyte was a true pioneer in its field.

Dentsply International Inc (Dentsply) was incorporated in 1969 in succession to a business previously conducted, since 1899, by The Dentists’ Supply Company of New York (DSCo). Dentsply is currently engaged primarily in the manufacture and wholesale distribution of dental supplies and equipment. The company also operates retail optical dispensaries. Dentsply has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1960.

Dentsply Ltd (Dentsply’s only subsidiary in the United Kingdom) which was located in Brighton at the Diamond Buildings, Coombe Road, BN2 4ER (they are now in Addlestone, Surrey), and incorporated in 1910 as Excelsior Dental Manufacturing Company. Its name was changed to Dentsply Ltd in 1936 at the time of its acquisition by DSCo. Dentsply Ltd manufactures porcelain and plastic artificial teeth.

DeTrey's Diatorics

In October 1970 Dentsply Ltd purchased from ADI the assets and business of a tooth manufacturing factory at Blackpool which ADI had purchased two years earlier from the Dental Manufacturing Company Ltd (DMCo) together with the other dental business of that company. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Dentsply Ltd transferred production of these teeth to its Brighton factory, to both manufacture and supply them for former customers of DMCo. The overall volume of production had increased somewhat since the two manufacturing operations were consolidated in Brighton, as the following comparison between 1974 and 1969 (the last year of operations for the Blackpool factory) shows: Number of teeth produced 1969-1974:

DMCo teeth               11,237,123 (Blackpool)          15,808,743 (Brighton)

Dentsply teeth            17,853,671 (Brighton)             18,676,940 (Brighton)

Dentsply continued in Brighton until1991 when it closed with the loss of 90 jobs after improvements in dental health resulted in orders falling away

DSCo. is the world’s largest producer of artificial teeth (both porcelain and plastic) and these it manufactures in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in various other plants which it either owns or controls in Europe, Australia and South America. It claims to offer the largest variety of artificial teeth in the world, both in the number of lines and in the total of forms, sizes and shades.

At Work With…

… Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

This is the second blog on mammal taxidermy. This time describing the processes of preparing a mammal as a posed mount rather than as a flat skin.

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The mammal used was a rabbit acquired from a local butcher’s shop which had already been semi-prepared with the belly opened up and the stomach removed. This time, there was no intention to later include the rabbit in the museum’s accessioned collections, so the usual process of weighing and measuring it was not carried out.

The removal of the rabbit’s skin was carried out in much the same way as with the fox with some differences. These differences were required for the purpose of displaying the skin as a mount rather than a flat skin. The most obvious alteration was in the preparation of the legs. In the case of the fox, each leg was cut down the entire length and the flesh was removed along with the bones. For a mounted specimen the bones need to remain as a method of support and unsightly stitch marks from incisions need to be avoided. So, with the rabbit, the skin on the legs was peeled back to the ankle joint and the flesh was removed from the bones using the scalpel. Once completed an incision was made in the sole of the foot and the muscles and tendons were removed. A sturdy wire was then fed up through the base of the foot and along the length of the bones. This wire was bound to the bone with string, before packages of wood wool and tow (plant fibres) were tied around the bones to mimic the shape of the muscles. The process was repeated on the other three legs. The position of the leg joints was recorded on an outline diagram of the carcass once the body was removed.

The preparation of the head is also different for a mounted specimen. The head of the rabbit was skinned, the same as the fox, however the central incision only went to the base of the neck. The neck and skull were then removed by turning the animal inside out. In normal circumstances the skull would be de-fleshed, then placed back inside the skin to fill out the head. However, the rabbit skull was badly damaged in this case and was not usable.

After the rest of the body was removed, the skin was washed, and any remaining flesh still stuck to the skin removed. The lips of the rabbit were sewn up to prevent the mouth opening during the drying process when the skin shrinks.

Body stuffing can either be purchased from a taxidermy retailer as a preformed plastic body or built from scratch. In our case, a body was made in the traditional way using wood wool (finely shaved wood) jute tow (used in sack cloth) and string. It was built up with wood wool, dampened with water and pesticide. This was wrapped with string at various points to secure the wool as well as to help assess the size of the body. When the body had been constructed, to the appropriate size for the skin, it was covered in a thin layer of tow and wrapped in cotton thread. This gives a smooth surface, which prevents lumps appearing in the skin.

To compensate for the lack of a skull (and Jeremy using it as a good opportunity to demonstrate how to salvage such a situation) a head was added to the body stuffing. In normal circumstances, the skull would be packed out with wood wool and modelling putty would used to fill the eye sockets and hold a pair of glass eyes in place. In this case, the modelling putty was built directly onto the head section of the body stuffing and the skull shaped by using more putty, cotton wool and string.

The whole body stuffing was then inserted head first into the skin. The wires bound to the leg bones were pushed into the stuffing material using the diagram as a guide to the position of the joints. Once the legs were anchored into place, the body was sewn up. The legs were then bent into the desired pose and the body was mounted onto a temporary wooden board to dry.

During drying the skin tightens up and sets the position of the pose. Drying involves pinning the skin into position and brushing and blow drying the fur. Once the fur looks presentable the mammal can be left to dry at room temp for several weeks. In larger mammals the skin shrinks significantly during the drying process so tanning is used to prevent it. On smaller mammals it isn’t such a problem.