What made Stan Wood a great collector?

Abstract

Stan Wood was an exceptional fossil collector who, over a collecting career of more than 40 years, provided British palaeontology with an abundance and variety of new Carboniferous fossils, the like of which had not been collected since Victorian times. So, what made him a great collector? Here, with the help of Stan's family, his friends and colleagues, we try to provide the answer. There is no single factor that stands out, but a complex mixture of innate and learned behaviours that together produced a unique talent. Although he acquired an Open University degree in geology, Stan was largely self-taught as a collector and, in doing so, became an accomplished and confident field geologist. He was naturally curious, persistent and very observant, with a photographic memory. He was tough, very strong and enjoyed hard physical work. He was congenial, unorthodox and a calculated risk taker. He asked questions, tested ideas and had a healthy disregard for authority. He was systematic, kept detailed records and shared his discoveries. He not only loved collecting fossils but, in the process, discovered in himself the essential qualities of a true scientist.

Jennifer A. Clack. 3 November 1947—26 March 2020

“…After his Wardie collection was purchased by the Royal Scottish Museum in the early 1970s, and Panchen used this material as the basis of a PhD project, Wood and Panchen developed a close working relationship. Under Panchen's tutelage, Wood began to prospect for Early Carboniferous vertebrate localities in southern Scotland, and soon scored spectacular successes at Dora near Cowdenbeath in Fife (1974), Foulden near Berwick-on-Tweed (1978), Bearsden near Glasgow (1980) and East Kirkton Quarry near Bathgate, West Lothian (1984) (Smithson & Rolfe 2018). As a result, the Panchen Lab developed into a scientific ‘perfect storm’ of gifted researchers and world-class material that led an international renaissance of Carboniferous tetrapod studies.…”

Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding “Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil-based scientific data”: the importance of private collections

“…-Ray-finned fishes: Menzel et al 1982(see Lehmann 2003; Tischlinger and Arratia 2013;Ebert 2019;-Plesiosaurs: Sachs et al 2013;-Mosasaurs: Mulder et al 2013;-Turtles, dinosaurs anddinosaur tracks: Ballerstedt 1921, 1922;Wiffen 1991;Lindgren et al 2008 (see Hornung andReich 2007); Rauhut et al 2012;Field et al 2020;-Mammals: Micklich 2001;Martin et al 2005;Mol et al 2006;Reumer et al 2018;-Carboniferous vertebrates: Stan Wood, in Fraser et al 2018;Smithson and Rolfe 2018;-Echinoderms: Rievers 1961(see Dehm 1961 ;Hess 1975;Kutscher 1978;Jagt 1999Jagt , 2000aJagt , 2000bJagt , 2000cJagt , 2000dVillier 2003 (see Reich 2001); Hess and Messing 2011 (see Etter 2018); Thuy et al 2012Thuy et al , 2018Jagt et al 2014Gale et al 2018;-Cephalopods: Mundlos 1973(see Hagdorn 1988); Kaplan et al 1987;Hewitt and Jagt 1999;Dietze and Hostettler 2016;Jagt and Jagt-Yazykova 2019;Jenny et al 2019;Košťák et al 2019;-Molluscs in general: Van Eldijk et al 2019;-Arach...…”

A Mississippian (early Carboniferous) tetrapod showing early diversification of the hindlimbs

“…The holotype was collected by the late Stan Wood and donated to the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge (UMZC), probably in the 1990s, although details of its collection were, unusually, not recorded by him. Possible reasons for this are that the specimen derived either from one of the spoil heaps from the old quarry workings of the locality or from one of the boundary walls that Stan had bought and collected from before the main East Kirkton quarry was discovered 16 . The matrix lithology suggests that the specimen may have originated from Black Shale Unit 82 17 , a particularly fossil-rich horizon that has yielded several compressed, but often near-complete and slightly disarticulated tetrapods.…”