Ricardo Araújo

Jeff Liston, Adam Stuart Smith

Academic paper

Irish Journal of Earth Science

26

17-32

Alfred Nicholson Leeds (1847�1917) is famous among vertebrate palaeontologists for amassing an invaluable collection of fossil vertebrates from the Middle Jurassic aged �Oxford Clay� deposits of the Peterborough district in the UK, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part of his collection was acquired by the National Museum of Ireland�Natural History in November 1893 but has not previously been described. This fossil material includes a suite of Jurassic marine reptiles: crocodiles, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. There are no examples, however, of the giant fish Leedsichthys; the remains of which are commonly found among the fauna of the Oxford Clay Formation. Despite representing only a very small fraction of the total Leeds Collection, the specimens in Ireland are significant historically, and have scientific value in their own right. For the first time, in this paper, a historical review of the Dublin Leeds Collection is presented, the fossil specimens described and a long-lost piece of important documentation is presented.

English