Continental trace fossils and museum exhibits - Geological Curators ...

Figure 3. Smaller Triassic reptile track specimens in adrawer at The Butts store, Warwick.and invertebrate traces, other than those mentionedabove, are housed in drawers amongst thestratigraphically and taxonomically orderedpalaeontological collections at The Butts store, andalso the Market Hall Museum (Figure 3).The largest Triassic specimen, the ‘Murchison andStrickland’ slab (Figures 1, 2), is housed in a woodenbox within the store at The Butts, Warwick. Since itwas first figured (Murchison and Strickland 1840),the specimen has suffered slight superficial abrasion,dust impregnation and a major crack (Figure 1). It ishoped that funding will be obtained to conserve andre-house this important specimen in the near future.Other large sandstone slabs are stored in woodenboxes with lids or on purpose-built trolleys. OversizedLower Jurassic specimens (including burrowedlimestone blocks from the Rugby Limestone Member;Figure 4) are housed within purpose-built woodenboxes. Specimens in boxes and drawers in both storeswere recently re-packed as part of a volunteer project,implementing acid-free card trays and plastazotefoam ‘cushions’ (Figure 3).Figure 4. Limestone block preserving Diplocraterionburrows (Warwickshire Museum specimen G15521),Southam Cement Works quarry, Warwickshire (RugbyLimestone Member, Blue Lias Formation, Lower Jurassic).Block is 250 mm wide.Figure 5. Beasley Archive photograph 365, showingTriassic sandstone slabs preserving reptile tracks, ondisplay at the Market Hall Museum, Warwick. Thephotograph is attributed to ‘J. Harriott, 15 High Street,Warwick’. An identical photograph (Beasley Archive 28)is dated April 1902.DisplayAn account by Hugh Miller (see Sarjeant 1974)indicated that Triassic reptile tracks were a feature ofthe WNHAS museum at the Market Hall in 1845.Subsequent accounts (e.g., Brodie and Kirshaw 1872;Beasley 1898, 1906) confirm the continued displayof such specimens through the latter part of thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Importantly,the Beasley Archive (Tresise and Sarjeant 1997;personal observations) includes photographs of suchspecimens at the museum during the 1900s (Figure5). The museum’s current geology gallery, datingback to the 1970s, displays several WNHAS slabswithin the contexts of Triassic palaeontology andpalaeoenvironments, and the Rev. Peter BellingerBrodie’s contributions to geology. Two specimensare on open display (Figure 6).Recent researchJohn Pollard (University of Manchester) researchedthe Triassic vertebrate track collections in the early1980s, providing up-to-date identifications and noteson associated invertebrate trace fossils (also seeAppendix). During the late 1990s, Geoffrey Tresise(Liverpool Museum) realised the status of the‘Murchison and Strickland’ slab (Figures 1, 2) aspreserving the first recorded Triassic footprints fromEngland (Tresise and Radley 2000; Tresise 2003).More recently, King et al. (2005) have revised thestatus of Triassic vertebrate footprints attributed toChirotherium, drawing upon Brodie’s records oflarger tracks from Warwickshire (see above andAppendix). The present author’s research into LateTriassic and Jurassic bioerosion has been reported inrecent issues of the Proceedings of the Cotteswold-250-