Oxford attracts independent thinkers – none more so than William Buckland, who transformed the teaching of science at Oxford University, and made the science of palaeontology intriguing and sexy. It’s about big beasts.

According to a series of wonderful lectures last week at the Oxford Playhouse’s Burton Taylor Studio, dinosaurs delight.

Jim Kennedy, a former head of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History, described the extraordinary life and passions of an Oxford academic, who in his lifetime, entertained, intrigued and outraged in equal measure.

Arriving in Oxford to read Classics and Theology, William Buckland graduated from Corpus Christi College in 1804.

There wasn’t much choice: either accept a country living – most likely in the gift of the college – or stick around, eeking a meagre living teaching, while waiting for one of the plum positions in the university to fall vacant.

Buckland chose the latter, but when a £100 stipend and academic title fell to him, he headed off to explore Britain and Europe for evidence of the fall-out from Noah’s flood. Hitting on a prehistoric cave bear cluster, Buckland caused even more of sensation when he deduced that a Yorkshire location contained not the bones of a few cattle, but rather prehistoric remains of elephant and rhinoceros, dismembered in a hyena’s lair.

Returning to Oxford, Buckland struck lucky. A circus menagerie was in town. It contained a travelling hyena. Borrowing the hyena, Buckland visited Oxford Market.

There he bought an ox bone, and offered it to the hyena. After an hour or so’s vigorous chomping, Buckland extracted the bone from the hyena, and compared it to a sample he had taken from the Yorkshire site. The dentition of the live hyena, and the gnawed bone was identical. Buckland launched the idea that contemporary species could shed light on those now extinct.

On another occasion, Buckland woke his wife in the middle of the night, and asked her to make pastry. Rushing out into the garden, Buckland seized the family’s pet tortoise. He placed it on the pastry. Slowly, it made tracks. Buckland compared these to fossil samples he was studying, and concluded that the tracks in prehistoric stone were indeed those of a reptile, similar to the modern tortoise. Students, academics and townspeople flocked to his lectures alike.

Buckland was made Dean of Westminster in 1845, and with the post came the Old Rectory at Islip. Buckland startled his neighbours by riding out with a small barley sugar-loving bear (Tig) in pillion position. When Tig escaped, in a crazed sugar rush, he caused mayhem in the village. He was eventually re-housed, but died teething. Either that, or tooth decay set in.

Dr Tim Ewin, of the Natural History Museum in London, was given a hard time by the many bright eyed children in the audience. He too had the power to startle. Not only did Tyrannosaurus Rex have feathers, but many were not dinosaurs at all, but merely reptiles.

The pleisiosaur – having a long neck and small head, was able to splice through shoals of fish with a whip-like movement.

Try it yourself: hand flat – no air resistance; hand raised, thumb upward – no chance. Not many people know that – but That’s what you can learn living in Oxford.

Go and visit our wonderful Museum of Natural History to find out more.

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