Uncommon assortment of hen fossils from 55m years in the past donated to Scottish museum | Fossils

A outstanding assortment of fossilised birds that lived 55 million years in the past has been bequeathed to the Nationwide Museums Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh and consists of dozens of species which might be unknown to science.

Relationship from the start of the Eocene epoch, they characterize the early phases within the evolution of recent birds.

Amassed by the late Michael Daniels, an novice palaeontology fanatic, the gathering is described as some of the vital of its sort on the planet. Such is its scale that it’s going to take a number of years to work by way of and describe all of the specimens, however preliminary evaluation suggests at the least 50 new species.

Dr Andrew Kitchener, the NMS’s principal curator of vertebrates, informed the Observer: “That is so thrilling, an exquisite assortment. A number of the birds have traits that are actually discovered in several fashionable hen households – combined up collectively.”

The significance of the gathering “can’t be overestimated”, mentioned Kitchener, each within the UK, the place there is no such thing as a comparable web site for avian fossils, and additional afield. The specimens are all of the extra thrilling as a result of, regardless of having been buried in clay for tens of millions of years, they’re preserved in three dimensions. At different websites they’re often present in a squashed state.

Kitchener paid tribute to Daniels, who promised the bequest some months earlier than his demise final September, aged 90. By day, Daniels’s numerous jobs included cabinet-maker and locksmith, however his ardour was palaeontology, which took him from his house at Loughton close to Epping Forest to fossil websites outdoors London and elsewhere in southern England. Within the Seventies, he developed a extra specialised curiosity in Eocene London Clay – from the interval after dinosaurs grew to become extinct. After retiring in 1985, he moved to Holland-on-Sea in order that he might pursue this curiosity at close by Walton-on-the-Naze, the place there’s a notable London Clay formation.

He had struck up a friendship with Kitchener 25 years in the past, after he and his spouse, Pam, moved to Edinburgh, the place their daughter Caroline lived

Visiting the NMS, they met Kitchener, who recalled: “He mentioned, ‘I’d prefer to see your Eocene hen assortment.’ I mentioned, ‘I’d love to indicate you it, however we don’t have any.’ Then he went on to inform me about his big assortment.”

Kitchener remembers him as a pleasant man who was largely self-taught however knew his topic and had a particular ability in in search of out fossils from in any other case unprepossessing lumps of clay eroded out of the Naze cliffs. “Beforehand, solely occasional stray bones had been discovered there, however Michael found a whole lot of more-or-less full skeletons, from fragmentary bones of a giant archaic falcon ancestor … to tiny hummingbird-sized skeletons of a hen that resembles a swift.”

Daniels estimated that he drove 27,000 miles and walked 1,590 miles on area visits to Walton-on-the-Naze to gather 15 tonnes of London Clay. Kitchener mentioned: “Extracting, processing, sieving and drying the residues had been painstaking duties. Separating the related finds and marrying collectively fragments into some coherence then concerned his watchmaker-like abilities, aided by a binocular microscope, probes and tweezers, in order that he was even in a position to extract the middle-ear bones of tiny birds.”

A number of of the world’s main pure historical past museums had supplied to offer a everlasting house for the gathering, however Daniels had resisted all advances.

Kitchener mentioned: “He trusted me that we’d take care of the gathering properly. He additionally requested that we work with [avian palaeontologist] Dr Gerald Mayr in Germany to get the gathering labored on.”

Mayr, of the Senckenberg Analysis Institute, Frankfurt am Fundamental, mentioned: “The significance of Michael Daniels’ assortment can’t be overstated. There’s nothing prefer it within the UK, definitely, and it’s similar to different bird-rich websites within the US, China and Germany.

“The truth that so many specimens are preserved in three dimensions makes this some of the vital collections of its sort on the planet.”

He has simply printed papers on two species within the assortment, one among which pays tribute to Daniels: Danielsraptor phorusrhacoides, a big historical falcon with a slender beak and lengthy legs, which appeared extra like a caracara from the Americas than a kestrel or a peregrine.

One other, Nasidytes ypresianus, is an ancestor of the diver or loon, besides that, not like at the moment’s diver, it lacked the slender dagger-like invoice, and its jaws had been wider.

Kitchener added that within the Eocene epoch the local weather was a lot hotter than at the moment, which can clarify why the large range of hen species at Walton-on-the-Naze is “extra like what you’d see in an Amazonian rainforest than the Essex of at the moment”.

As soon as the gathering has been totally studied, the NMS hopes to stage an exhibition, with reconstructions of the birds as they’d have appeared 55 million years in the past.