Unearthing the Past: Exploring Scotland's Fossil Code with Dr Elsa Panciroli

In this episode we chat to esteemed palaeontologist Dr Elsa Panciroli, a researcher at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oxford, who studies fossils and extinct life, with a particular interest in mammals.

We discover the rich fossil heritage of Scotland and learn about the importance of responsible fossil collecting and preservation. We also shed light on the contributions of pioneering women in palaeontology and their invaluable role in shaping our understanding of fossil research.

Tune in to this captivating conversation as we discover more about the Scottish Fossil Code and celebrate the incredible women working in palaeontology.

More information:
Find out more about Elsa’s work on her website, on twitter or Instagram.
The Scottish Fossil Code
The Scottish Geology Trust

Transcript

Kirstin:

Hi and welcome to Make Space For Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature and landscapes. I'm Kirsten Guthrie and in each episode we'll help you connect with and take care of our amazing natural world. In this episode, Tim Hancocks and I chat to palaeontologist Dr Elsa Panciroli, a researcher at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oxford who studies fossils and extinct life with a particular interest in mammals. She explains why the Scottish Fossil Code is so important, what we can all learn from Scotland's fossil heritage and she tells us about Scotland's early women pioneers in fossil research.

Hi Elsa, welcome to the Make Space For Nature podcast. Thanks for joining us today. We really want to find out what inspired you to become a palaeontologist and what's your career journey been like so far?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I guess I'm supposed to say that I wanted to be a palaeontologist right from the moment I was thinking about the world, from when I was like five or something. Actually, it's not entirely true in my case. I did at one point go through the dinosaur phase that all kids go through, but then I kind of moved on to different things. I wanted to be so many different things when I was younger and I really didn't think about palaeontology as a serious thought until much, much later. In fact, I was already embarking on a career in conservation studying at the University of the Highlands and Islands. But in one of our classes about climate change, we started to look at climate in deep, deep times, so as in millions of years. And I suddenly rekindled that fascination with things that took place in the prehistoric past. And so I kind of switched and ended up going into palaeontology after all. So yeah, it was a bit of a roundabout journey.

Kirstin:

Brilliant, and I'm really intrigued to know what and where your first fossil find was and what's been your most important fossil discovery?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I don't know if I can remember what the first fossil I found was. I don't think I ever found one as a child. I remember having a fossil or two, but I think I was given them from museum gift shops and things like that, or Mr. Wood's Fossil Shop in Edinburgh or somewhere like that. So I did have some fossils. In fact, I had a cave bear tooth and that was like my treasure. But the first one I actually found myself, it wasn't until I was a grown-up, or a reasonably grown-up, grown-up. I was in my twenties and I went to the Isle of Skye on holiday with my partner and found, along the beach there was this bed of rocks and the rocks are really soft and they actually melt in the sea water, so the sea is lapping in and it's just basically loading this rock away and the rock is full of ammonites, so that's those little spiral shells that you find throughout the fossil record up until the same time as the dinosaurs became extinct actually. And so I found one and it was magical because it was absolutely tiny, it was only about the size of my fingernail, but also it was raining at the time, because it's the Isle of Skye, and as I was holding it on my hand it melted in my hand. There’s something really poetic about it and magical. So I always remember that as the first fossil I found. As for the most important, that's very difficult to say. I have worked with a team and of course as a team when you're looking for fossils, you all find it together. So to say which one I specifically found, I don't know, but we find a lot of really amazing tiny vertebrate animals, that's animals with backbones, from the middle Jurassic on the Isle of Skye where I'm now doing fieldwork. And I think some of those are turning out to be particularly important for understanding the evolution of modern groups of animals.

Tim:

That's incredible. So you touched on with mentioning the fossils you found together with your team. So we understand there's a remarkable diversity of fossils in Scotland. What is your involvement in the fossil research?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

So I'm an active researcher. In other words, I'm carrying out research all the time on fossils being found in Scotland. My area of specialism is the origin of mammals. That's the group we belong to, which a lot of people don't realise actually have their beginnings in the time of dinosaurs. So I study these fossils and try to work out the way in which mammals evolved. So I'm a researcher and I contribute research findings. I also take part in field work every year, particularly in the Isle of Skye but also in other parts of Scotland. But I'm really focused as well on doing things like public outreach, speaking to everything from community groups to going into schools. For example, I did a programme of workshops called the Scottish Fossil Workshops where I went specifically to remote and rural Highland primary schools, the kinds of places where people don’t even visit because they think they’re too far away or there aren’t enough pupils. I specifically chose to go to those schools because that's the kind of school I went to. I brought fossils with me and helped teach the kids about what they were, where they came from, how fossils are preserved but also how to look for them responsibly and become the stewards of their own fossil heritage. So that kind of thing really matters a lot to me. But I also donate my time generally to things like charitable organisations. I'm a trustee of the Scottish Geology Trust. And I also donate my time to things like the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I'm always trying to look for ways in which I can feed back into the paleontological community and also to the public to let them know what kind of cool research is taking place.

Tim:

That's great. Can I ask you about the Scottish Fossil Code? So obviously there are a lot of people looking for fossils, be it professionals or amateurs who have an interest in the Code setting out the best practices for collecting, identifying, conserving and storing fossil specimens. Could you let us know how you think the code helps palaeontology in Scotland?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

The Scottish Fossil Code is really important and quite unique actually because not every country has a Code like this. It's basically a set of very practical advice for everything from professionals like myself through to the general public on the best practice for looking for fossils, what to do if you find a fossil and how to do it in a way that's responsible and that thinks about long term conservation of sites and making sure that we don't damage our natural environment or lose any of our heritage. Because obviously these fossils are our shared heritage and the last thing we want is to lose them. So it's an incredibly important Code. And I think it's also useful for me because a lot of people do ask me, how can I find fossils? What do I do if I find a fossil? And this is something I can point people to. I can give them my own advice, but then I can say, if you want to know more check out this document, it really gives you everything that you need to know, including people to contact if you find something, to make sure that it's not lost science. So I think it's really, really valuable for now and for keeping these fossils protected into the future.

Kirstin:

One important part of that is the Code encourages people, regardless of background gender, to explore Scotland's rich fossil heritage. And actually some of Scotland's early fossil pioneers were women. So which of these pioneers stand out for you?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

That's a great question. I think one thing I do think is that we probably don't know all of the women who've contributed to the history of geology and fossils, really all around the world, but including Scotland. There's probably a lot of unsung female heroes or heroines, I should say. Hopefully we'll find out more about them in the future. A few of them we do know about. I think one that really stands out for me is Elizabeth Anderson Gray. So she collected fossils in the 1800s. I think she died in the early 1920s, but she was still collecting fossils in her 90s, so she was very dedicated. Most of the fossils she collected were from Girvan, Ayrshire, and they were mostly invertebrates, so mostly shell-y animals, from the Silurian. So that's about 420 million years ago, so really, really old stuff. And I think she's remarkable for a number of reasons. One is that she got her first interest in collecting from her father, but then not only did she do it her whole life, but she then passed on that passion to her daughters. So Alice and Edith, her daughters, then continued collecting after her death. And she collected so many specimens that have become the foundation of collections across the country and are still being worked on and published on by scientists today. And I think that's quite remarkable especially when she's not a household name and she kind of should be. We should really be singing her praises and recognising the hard work she did.

Kirstin:

Absolutely, what a legacy, that is phenomenal. In her 90s did you say she was still collecting?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Yeah, in her 90s still trundling out there picking up rocks. I tell you, when you get rock fever and you just can't stop yourself. But I think it's important as well to recognise that, of course, in the past, women didn't necessarily have the funds or the access to gold collect fossils and rocks. So many of them did other kinds of things that are equally important contributions. So many women illustrated fossils, often for their brothers or their husbands or male friends, and they supported behind the scenes until they got to the point where they could actually actively participate in the science. So yeah, we mustn't forget about those contributions as well, because those are also really important.

Kirstin:

And do you think that they were, well, they probably weren't, but do you think they've been given their true credit for their achievements maybe now? Or are we still, as you say, still trying to tell the world really about what they've achieved?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I think we are still working on it. Some have been better recognised than others, but I think many of the male figures in geology in general just get more airtime, and they are more likely to be household names. And it makes sense because, of course, they had the structure, the way science was set up, meant that they could do a lot of things that many women couldn't. But I still think that there's huge contributions that women have made in the past and continue to make and it will balance out, but it's work in progress.

Tim:

And the legacy of some of those women who found fossils in the past, do you think that has helped to break down barriers for people such as yourself or other women scientists who are trying to make their mark in the fossil field?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I think so. I mean, definitely as more and more women and people from also minority backgrounds get into different disciplines where they haven't been before, it does always open the door because it gives people role models, first of all. And also, I think one of the real gifts of having a more diverse research group of researchers working on any subject is that they bring different viewpoints and ask different questions. And so, yeah, definitely, I think that it would have helped. But a lot of it was also institutional change that had to happen. So for a long time, learned societies didn't admit women. So very famous fossil hunting ladies such as Mary Anning, were finding some of the most important fossils in the world during that time period, but couldn't actually go and hear the paper is about their fossils being read in the learned societies because they were not allowed. So it's taken these sort of steps of things opening up to make it possible for women to actually get into these fields in the first place.

Kirstin:

That's kind of unbelievable, isn't it, that kind of situation? And obviously things have changed for women working in this field now and will continue to. But what do you think these pioneers would think about how the science of palaeontology has developed and the role of women like yourself?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I'd like to think they'd be delighted. I think many of them, there are many of them who clearly would have loved to have had the opportunity to do this kind of thing. And that just wasn't possible. For some of the more affluent women who took part in fossil collecting, there were more avenues for this, but for the working class, for anybody from a poor social economic background, this wasn't the possibility. So I think they'd be delighted to see that it’s possible as a woman, to actually get into palaeontology. I think there's still some way to go. Many of the structures of the way that research is carried out and the institutions where it's carried out are still kind of set up in a way that isn't as easy for women to access. And there's definitely still implicit biases. Everybody means well, but sometimes things are still running in a way that makes it very difficult to get ahead. So there's work to do, but it's certainly much, much better.

Kirstin:

Yeah, it sounds like it indeed. And just looking at your own career, you've added author to your long list of achievements, which has been fantastic. And you've had various books published. So tell us about your writing and the books.

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Yeah, it's been a very interesting journey. Actually, being a writer is one of the things I always wanted to do from very, very young, but it's very, very difficult to become a writer. So I had kind of thought that wasn't going to happen. And I've ended up getting back into it through sharing the scientific stuff that I've been finding out. So through my Master's degree, my PhD, I was learning all this new stuff and it just blew my mind. Like, the kind of stuff that you can find out from fossils is absolutely incredible. And I just thought, nobody really talks about this. I've got to tell people. So it started with articles and I got some published in newspapers and online and in magazines. And then I realized I actually had enough to tell people that I could put it in a book. I was very lucky that it got picked up by a publisher and that kind of started everything. So it's been great. I love telling people about the things that I also think are mind-blowing and amazing. And it has also given me an opportunity to do things like trying to encourage people to what they call reframing the narrative. So, for example, in palaeontology, there's this whole idea that all palaeontologists are like Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park, you know, they're all men, they're all wearing checked shirts, they're all in the Badlands, they've all got pickaxes. So getting a chance to say, yeah, those people exist, but actually palaeontology is way more diverse than that. And you know, you could be a palaeontologist with a background in computing or you could never leave the museum. You could work entirely for museum specimens. You don't have to go, you don't have to be a big active field working kind of person. So I got a chance to do that. And also to write about some of the kind of women I was just talking about, women who are unrecognized in their fields. So one of my heroines in particular is a Polish palaeontologist and in my first book I got to kind of tell her story in a way that hadn't really been shared before and I'm really pleased to get the opportunity to do that.

Kirstin:

Have you got any top facts about fossils that you could share, or favourite things that maybe blow your mind that you could share with our listeners, or is there anything that you would love to just tell them about?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Oh, everything! Well, I mean, one of the things I think intrigues me a lot because it's something I'm tackling in my own work, is how do you use fossils to find out about things that are not preserved in bones? So for example, mammals feed their young on milk. How can you use a fossil, which is the skeleton, to figure out when an animal might have started feeding its young on milk? And it turns out you can do things like that using fossils because you can you can find out where nerves and blood vessels went through the body and changes in the body that are linked to those sort of soft tissue changes. That kind of stuff. That really blows my mind. But I think the one thing that blew my mind when I got into palaeontology was not to do with specifically with fossils, but to do with climate and climate change, was that you can use modern climate models and you can actually apply them to the planet, like millions of years ago, to see what the weather was like. That was just like that moment of, oh my goodness, and I was reading this paper about what the weather was like in the Pacific about 200 million years ago and I was just like, how can you possibly find these things out? But that's the wonder of the fossil record, is that you can find out all kinds of stuff like that.

Tim:

So you've talked a little bit about the barriers, be it gender or class and wealth of getting involved in and looking for fossils or palaeontology. But how would you encourage people now, especially young people, to get involved and explore their local area? Be it just on a hunt for a once off as pastime or maybe part of a hobby to become a citizen scientist looking or potentially even a future career in palaeontology or looking at fossils in some way. Can you tell us how you would encourage them and why it's important and interesting and what they should do to go about it?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I guess if you want to go and start looking at fossils in the field as it were, obviously you might live first of all near somewhere that's quite famous for fossils. So if so and you know about it then go there. That's the simplest first step. But also go into museums because whatever your local museum, even if it's a little bit distant from you, they are going to give you the kind of idea of where fossils might be in your country or in your area. I think looking at a geology map is a really good idea. So geology maps can range from being very, very complicated to much more simplified ones. But if you can find a geology map for your local area, which you might be able to do, for example, through the Scottish Geology Trust website, they have really great pages all about rocks and fossils in Scotland. You can see where the rocks are that would be in the ages where there's fossils or the environments where there's fossils. So very often fossils are preserved, for example, in marine environments, so what used to be the sea. So you could use that geological map, you could say, right, look, there's fossils from, for example, the Jurassic, they're over here, and you can just go and have a look at the rocks and you never know what you might find. Definitely I think online there's a lot of information about where to go to look for fossils. It’s really important as well to take a look at the Scottish Fossil Code and make sure that the place that you're visiting you're allowed to go there because some places of course you know it's private land so you know you might have to speak to somebody to ask for access. There are quite a lot of places that are well known and are allowed to access things so those are the best ones to go to. There's some really cool places like the Glasgow Fossil Grove, it's in one of the parks in Glasgow where there are fossils in the situ, so in the ground, they’re fossil tree stumps from about 300 million years ago and you can just go and look at a site like that and get an idea of what this ancient environment used to look like. Or Cromarty which is in the Black Isle near Inverness is another really well-known site. So just make sure that if you're going to these places that you know you're mindful and also not to just go with a hammer and start whacking everything and trying to find fossils. Usually you're allowed to pick up things that are lying on a beach, for example, or have already come out of the rocks. But don't hammer at rock faces and smash stuff up because you can cause a lot of damage, including you could damage what fossils that you might find. But I don't want to discourage people from looking, because if you do find something, the best thing to do is to take all the information about where it is, what you found, take photographs if you can, and if you think it's really important, send that to somebody like myself or to a museum and say what you found. And if it is something important, you never know, you might even get it named after you if it's a new species. So yeah, it's definitely something worth doing.

Kirstin:

Brilliant. I was going to actually talk about how we get more young people involved, but you've spoken about going to schools and going in and speaking to children there and also just some of the sites you've just mentioned. I think that would be a great start for kids as well. So when you do go into the schools, how do you get these kids engaged with what you're talking about?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Well, I think I was going to say kids love handling fossils, but so do adults. Everyone loves handling fossils. So quite often in museums, there are collections that you can touch. And I think if you can find a museum that has that, I definitely would encourage parents or aunties and uncles to take kids to do that kind of thing, because being able to touch them does make a big difference. And I brought a selection with me to the schools that I visited. And I told them about where these different fossils come from and about geological maps and how they work. But we also did fun activities. I think it’s always good to do something that is not only fun to do, but teaches you something. So it's worth looking online for games. There's quite a lot of fossil themed games that you can download or print out and kids can actively do that so that they can learn in a really fun and engaging way. And it's really important to get kids interested and to show them that fossils are not just really fun, cool looking things that you find and then you forget about. They teach us, they teach us about the past. And these kids, they're going to be the future stewards of our fossil heritage. So it's important work.

Kirstin:

Getting the kids involved from a young age is so important. And we always talk about trying to get more people outside, especially through this podcast series. So, fossil finding sounds like such a great way to get outdoors, but I'm also wanting to ask, and just thinking about the damage to the environment, and you did say, you obviously don't go out with a hammer and bash things about, but can it damage the environment us going to find some fossils?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I think it can. It depends how you're doing it. I mean, as I say, there's a really responsible way to do it. And that's outlined in the Scottish Fossil Code. It's always better to look and take photographs or even drawings. I mean, sitting and drawing in some of these places can be really fun and some of the stuff you find. That's always better than actually taking things away. But there are places where there's so many fossils and they are just lying on beaches and so on it's actually not a problem to lift them and take them, particularly places that have fossils like ammonites, belemnites, which are usually very common and they weather out of the rocks really quickly. So I would check online for information about places where there's fossils like that and that could be a really great place to take kids, although you might regret it because they might end up with pockets full of rocks that you have to keep in your house for the for the foreseeable future.

Tim:

That’s exactly what would happen to me with my son. With climate change and nature loss in mind, do you think there are things that the Scottish fossils can teach us about climate change and what we might do to combat it?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Undoubtedly. So one of the biggest lessons from the fossil record is about climate change and is about extinction. So obviously most of the fossils that you'll find are animals that don't have any living counterparts today. They've all become extinct. So there's that first message that you can be teaching kids and that also reflecting on that things do naturally become extinct, but that there are these times where there are mass extinctions as well, and huge amounts of animals can become extinct. And usually those extinctions, in fact, pretty much always as far as we're aware, they always linked to climate change, whether it's precipitated by the most famous thing being, of course, an asteroid hitting the Earth, which led to massive climate change. But more often than not, it's volcanic eruptions in the past, massive volcanic eruptions that change our climate. So we have this direct link. We can look at the fossil record and say, we can see the climate changed and then these animals became extinct. So it's an open and shut case. We know those two things are linked. So we have that lesson to learn. But the other lesson is how did they then recover? So we can also look at how quickly did animals recover based on the fossil record and what way did they recover? What kinds of animals made it and which ones didn't? And that will help us in learning how to mitigate our current extinction crisis and how to navigate the future. So there's a lot to learn. And of course, another really, I find very exciting thing is that you'll go to somewhere that, for example, is a seashore and it's cold and it's February and you're freezing and you're trying to stay warm in the seashore and you're finding fossils in the sandstone that used to be a desert that was over 40 degrees near the equator and you're finding these bizarre animals that don't exist today. So I mean right there you're seeing how the whole landscape changes and shifts so it teaches us a lot about how the climate can change and how landscape can change over millions of years.

Kirstin:

You’ve spoken very passionately about what we've found, what fossils can tell us. Here's a very open-ended question for you, but what do you think is still waiting to be discovered?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Whoa, everything, everything's up for grabs. Oh, I don't know. I mean, in Scotland, there's a couple of really exciting areas where I think there's still a lot more to find out. One of them, I mean, I would say this, I'm biased, but I think is, on the Isle of Skye, the work that we're doing, because we're finding some exceptionally complete skeletons of really small backboned animals. And those kinds of skeletons are really rare. Usually you find big things. Big things are easier to find, just literally easier to find. But some of these very small animals, I think we're going to find out some really important things about the evolution of our planet through these animals and a contribution to the way ecosystems were set up in the time of dinosaurs. But another really interesting area is in the south of Scotland, in the borders. There's some great work on the very first animals to leave the water and walk on land. And how they made that transition, how did they turn from bony fish into four limbed walking creatures with lungs? And we don't have all the answers to that, we don't know exactly how it happened and I think there's probably going to be some really interesting discoveries made in that area as well. But who knows what else we might find.

Tim:

That's brilliant. Talking of things that people have actually found, you said that amateurs or people just looking about who think they've stumbled upon a fossil and maybe get very excited thinking you've found a T-Rex or some kind of exciting dinosaur. Have you had to break the news that they've just found an interesting stone that is not a fossil at all to a few folk?

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

I'm afraid that happens very regularly and it happens to us too. I said we were looking for these tiny little skeletons. Sometimes those little skeletons, they look actually the same as the black algae that grows on the rocks. So there are times where we'll get really excited and we'll call the team over. Look, I found something! And then one of them gets down with a fingernail and scrapes it and it comes off. You're like, oh, it was algae. Oops! Yeah, it happens all the time. So nobody should feel embarrassed if they make a mistake because it can be difficult. Fossils don't always look like fossils. Actually, one of the things that I found a few years ago was a fossil limb bone of a dinosaur on the Isle of Eigg. It was the first dinosaur fossil found on the island. And I actually, I just found it when I was running along the beach back to the team and I actually stepped on it and even I was looking at it thinking it looks like a bone but maybe it's not maybe it's a bit of tar or maybe it's something else and I had to call everyone over and say I think it's a bone but maybe it's not a bone and it took a lot of us to look at it before we were 100% sure. So yeah it happens all the time that you make mistakes but you never know you might actually find something cool.

Tim:

I can only imagine plenty of false alarms. Thank you so much for your time today, Elsa. That was really fascinating, learning more about fossils in Scotland and encourage more people to get out there and see what you can find. Follow the Fossil Code and who knows what dinosaurs or other exciting things might still be out there for us to find and learn some more.

Dr Elsa Panciroli:

Thank you so much for having me, it's been a pleasure.

Kirstin:

Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying Make Space for Nature, please follow it on your podcast app and leave a review or rating. We'd also love you to tell more people about the series. For more ways to connect with and help protect Scotland's natural world, go to nature.scot.