John Aram

Academic paper

Mercian Geologist

17

1

48-50

The search for the Lincolnshire plesiosaurs started with the message �Geology, not Archaeology�, on a Saturday morning telephone call from environmental archaeologist James Rackham. A local builder had just phoned him to report what appeared to be some bones stuck in a stone. Since the discovery had been made in the next village to the author �s home in Lincolnshire, he went to have a look. On the outskirts of Caythorpe, he found Andy Craig, a Derbyshire champion dry stone Waller, repairing an old ironstone wall. He had picked up a large stone that� had not fitted into the next space, so he had turned it over to see if it fitted better the other way up. There he noticed some dark bone-like patterns. So, well aware that bones of animals or humans found in old walls might be of archaeological significance, he phoned James. A quick inspection and a little gentle washing and brushing to remove some moss and lichen revealed that the stone contained a number of bones, recognisable as the major part of a plesiosaur paddle. That event started� investigations that led back to 1719 and the first known record of what later became known as plesiosaurs. In the process it was revealed that the publications of the Leicester and Cambridge Museums about plesiosaurs contained a number of significant errors concerning their earliest discovery.

English