Chapter 8 The Skiddaw graptolites

Abstract

Abstract When I was at Cambridge in the 1950s the Professor of Geology was Oliver Bulman (1902-1974) who lectured in palaeontology. He was a quiet man, with a quiet sort of interest: graptolites. He did not fraternize much with the undergraduates, but was regarded as a great authority on his subject. He was a wonderful artist, and when we got to dinosaurs in the syllabus his blackboard drawings drew spontaneous applause from the students. I never got to know him, but I do recall that when we were on a field excursion in South Wales a student found some nodules with three-dimensional pyritized graptolites therein. This was an exciting find. A telegram was sent to Cambridge and Bulman was on the next train to Pembrokeshire and soon arrived, full of excitement. He took away the specimens, and I suppose they were eventually described somewhere. I never saw the paper. Also at Cambridge at that time was a deaf old lady, Dr Gertrude Elles, whose work provides one of the main foci for the present chapter. She was reputed to inhabit a room somewhere in the attic, but we never saw her. Born in 1872, she would have been about 84 when I was a student. She died in 1960. However, she too was said to be a great authority on graptolites. From photographs (see Fig. 8.1), Elles was strikingly beautiful when young. 1 Elles was raised in Wimbledon, daughter of a Scottish businessman father and an English mother; and with her Scottish