Name the giant pliosaur after its finder Philip Jacobs
Name the giant pliosaur after its finder Philip Jacobs
The Issue
This petition was sent to the relevant parties on 3 March 2024. it will, however remain open. The relevant parties have the link and can monitor progression. Thank you to everybody who signed.
The recent discovery of a giant pliosaur on the Jurassic coast has caught the attention of nearly every news organ in the Western world.
On New Year’s Day on BBC One, the UK’s leading TV channel, David Attenborough, the UK’s foremost natural historian, featured this pliosaur in a flagship documentary.
The pliosaur was found by Philip Jacobs, an amateur fossil hunter known within the paleontological world.
Many of his finds feature in the Steve Etches fossil museum on the Jurassic coast.
This particular find is being quoted as being one of the most significant fossils to have ever been found. It is unique. It is huge. It is significant.
And yet Philip’s name is being effectively airbrushed from the historical record when it comes to this important find.
Much of the global promotional media fails to mention him. And the BBC One documentary with David Attenborough mentions him only for a few seconds as merely an unnamed ‘fossil enthusiast’.
The documentary uses some of his video at the beginning of the film, and doesn’t name him at all.
It calls those who took part in the excavation from the cliff face fossil hunters, and names them.
There are plans to name this creature after the landowner. This decision appears to have come about through conversations between the landowner and those who excavated the fossil after its discovery by Philip Jacobs.
Philip’s is the only name here not being given due credit.
This sort of thing has happened before. Think of John Harrison’s clocks for longitude. Think of William Smith’s geological map. Think of Rosalind Franklin’s work on DNA. Time and again, those with power and influence reduce or delete the names of less well-known citizen scientists from the record.
This petition will be sent to the decision makers on naming as well as the International Centre for Zoological Nomenclature.
7,676
The Issue
This petition was sent to the relevant parties on 3 March 2024. it will, however remain open. The relevant parties have the link and can monitor progression. Thank you to everybody who signed.
The recent discovery of a giant pliosaur on the Jurassic coast has caught the attention of nearly every news organ in the Western world.
On New Year’s Day on BBC One, the UK’s leading TV channel, David Attenborough, the UK’s foremost natural historian, featured this pliosaur in a flagship documentary.
The pliosaur was found by Philip Jacobs, an amateur fossil hunter known within the paleontological world.
Many of his finds feature in the Steve Etches fossil museum on the Jurassic coast.
This particular find is being quoted as being one of the most significant fossils to have ever been found. It is unique. It is huge. It is significant.
And yet Philip’s name is being effectively airbrushed from the historical record when it comes to this important find.
Much of the global promotional media fails to mention him. And the BBC One documentary with David Attenborough mentions him only for a few seconds as merely an unnamed ‘fossil enthusiast’.
The documentary uses some of his video at the beginning of the film, and doesn’t name him at all.
It calls those who took part in the excavation from the cliff face fossil hunters, and names them.
There are plans to name this creature after the landowner. This decision appears to have come about through conversations between the landowner and those who excavated the fossil after its discovery by Philip Jacobs.
Philip’s is the only name here not being given due credit.
This sort of thing has happened before. Think of John Harrison’s clocks for longitude. Think of William Smith’s geological map. Think of Rosalind Franklin’s work on DNA. Time and again, those with power and influence reduce or delete the names of less well-known citizen scientists from the record.
This petition will be sent to the decision makers on naming as well as the International Centre for Zoological Nomenclature.
7,676
The Decision Makers
Supporter Voices
Petition created on 1 January 2024