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William Smith (geologist)
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==Life's work== [[File:William Smiths House, Tucking Mill.jpg|thumb|[[Tucking Mill]] House, near [[Monkton Combe]], [[Somerset]]. A plaque on the house next door to Tucking Mill House states incorrectly that it was the home of William Smith.]] Smith worked at one of the estate's older mines, the Mearns Pit at High Littleton, part of the [[Somerset coalfield]] and the [[Somerset Coal Canal]].<ref>{{cite web|title=William Smith 1769β1839 "The Father of English Geology"|url=http://www.brlsi.org/node/18152|publisher=Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution|access-date=23 February 2013|archive-date=1 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201164625/http://www.brlsi.org/node/18152|url-status=dead}}</ref> As he observed the rock layers (or [[stratum|strata]]) at the pit, he realised that they were arranged in a predictable pattern and that the various strata could always be found in the same relative positions. Additionally, each particular stratum could be identified by the [[fossils]] it contained, and the same succession of fossil groups from older to younger rocks could be found in many parts of England. Furthermore, he noticed an easterly dip of the beds of rockβlow near the surface (about three [[degree (angle)|degrees]]), then higher after the [[Triassic]] rocks. This gave Smith a testable hypothesis, which he termed [[Principle of faunal succession|The Principle of Faunal Succession]], and he began his search to determine if the relationships between the strata and their characteristics were consistent throughout the country.<ref>{{cite web|title=William Smith (1769β1839)|url=http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/smith.html|publisher=University of California Museum of Paleontology|access-date=23 February 2013}}</ref> During subsequent travels, first as a surveyor (appointed by noted [[engineer]] [[John Rennie (engineer)|John Rennie]]) for the canal company until 1799 when he was dismissed, and later, he was continually taking samples and mapping the locations of the various strata, and displaying the vertical extent of the strata, and drawing cross-sections and tables of what he saw. This would earn him the name "Strata Smith".<ref>{{cite web|title=William Smith|url=http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/william-smith/index.html|publisher=Natural History Museum|access-date=23 February 2013}}</ref> As a natural consequence, Smith amassed a large and valuable collection of fossils of the strata he had examined himself from exposures in [[canals]], [[road]] and [[railway]] [[cutting]]s, [[quarries]] and [[escarpment]]s across the country. He also developed methods for the identification of deposits of [[Fuller's earth]] to the south of [[Bath, Somerset]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Macmillen|first=Neil|title=A history of the Fuller's Earth mining industry around Bath|year=2009|publisher=Lightmoor Press|location=Lydney|isbn=978-1-899889-32-7|page=9}}</ref> [[File:Smith fossils2.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.4|Engraving from William Smith's 1815 monograph on identifying strata by [[fossils]] showing an ''[[Encrinus]]'']] He published his findings with many pictures from his fossil collection, enabling others to investigate their distribution and test his theories. His collection is especially good on [[Jurassic]] fossils he collected from the [[Cornbrash Formation|Cornbrash]], [[Kimmeridge Clay]], [[Oxford Clay]], [[Oolitic limestone]] and other horizons in the sequence. They included many types of [[brachiopod]]s, [[ammonite]]s and [[mollusc]]s characteristic of the shallow seas in which they were deposited. Some of the names he coined (like Cornbrash) are still used today for this formation. It could be seen from Smith's findings that the deeper β and therefore older β the strata were, the more the fossilised species within them differed from living organisms. This gave great support and impetus to the hypothesis of biological [[evolution]] (which pre-dated the work of [[Charles Darwin]]).<ref>Asimov, I. (1982) ''Exploring the Earth & the Cosmos'', Crown Publishers Inc., New York, p. 200</ref>
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