24-07-2025
Richard Collins: A joy to learn about extinct and 'resurrected' creatures
'Ireland's Last Great Auk, Extinct 1844 — donated by Dr Robert Burkitt' reads an inscription on a display case in Trinity College Dublin's zoological museum. The large flightless seabird is the institution's most popular exhibit.
The Unnatural History of Animals — Tales from a Zoological Museum, just published, describes the celebrated creature's demise. The book's author, Dr Martyn Linnie, is the Museum's curator. He tells us that Burkitt did not realise at the time just how valuable this now priceless exhibit would become. His nose was out of joint so, to bury the hatchet, the College awarded him an annual 'Great Auk Pension' of £50 — a considerable sum at the time. Such colourful asides make this a lively and fascinating book.
The sign for the Tetrapod Trackway on Valentia Island, County Kerry
The great auk is the best known of the Museum's 25,000 specimens, but Ireland's main claim to palaeontological fame also features in Dr Linnie's account.
Mr James Dickinson of Lancashire Conservation Studios, Preston, works on the preservation of TCD's Great Auk, in 2009. Picture: TCD
The creature whose footprints are preserved in 385-million year old rock on Valentia Island, was 'a fish out of water'... one of the earliest land vertebrates. The ancient tetrapod is long extinct but specimens of a lungfish and a salamander, thought to be its oldest living relatives, feature in the Museum's collection. The Japanese giant salamander has the distinction of being the world's largest extant amphibian.
Path of tetrapod on Valentia Island, County Kerry, just below and to the right of the seaweed. The tetrapod was a predecessor of mammals and lived 385 million years ago in the Devonian period. Picture: Dan MacCarthy
But the museum, established as an aid to zoology students, is no parish-pump operation. All animal life, from the leeches used to treat Napoleon's haemorrhoids to the senseless massacre of the passenger pigeon, one of the world's most numerous birds, features in the book's 40 chapters.
Nor is this museum just another memorial graveyard — many of the creatures it displays are alive and well. Some of them have even arisen from the dead...
...One such is the world's most famous fish. In recounting its story, one museum curator celebrates the work of another member of his profession.
Drawing by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer of the strange fish recovered in East London, RSA, on Dec. 22, 1938, part of a letter to J.L.B. Smith, sent the next day, and preserved in the SAIAB, Grahamstown, RSA. Picture:
On the morning of July 30, 1938, curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was working in South Africa's natural history museum, when local fishermen brought in a fish, the likes of which neither she, nor they, had ever seen previously. Aged just 24, little did Marjorie know that her glamorous name was about to become known worldwide.
The 1.5 metre-long carcass, weighing 55kg, reminded Marjorie of depictions she had seen of pre-historic marine creatures. The local mortuary and food wholesalers refused to deep-freeze the smelly specimen, but she stuck to her guns, leaving no stone unturned until the strange fish's identity had been established. It turned out to be a species of coelacanth — a creature thought of have been extinct for 70 million years. Palaeontologist JLB Smith of Rhodes University named the species Latimeria chalumnae in her honour.
I peruse newly-published wildlife and natural history books from time to time. They are mostly rather worthy tomes, some offering new information and fresh insights. However, not all of them are easy to read and ploughing through some of the offerings can be tedious. But there are exceptions. Dr Linnie's history of his museum is one such — beautifully illustrated and full of colourful anecdotes, it is a joy to read. I found it hard to put down.
Martyn Linnie.
The Unnatural History of Animals — Tales from a Zoological Museum . 2025
