page_title: Etheldred Benett
section_title: Contribution to geology and palaeontology
hierarchical_section_title: Etheldred Benett / Contribution to geology and palaeontology
caption_attribution_description: English: Benett, Etheldred. 1815. Chicksgrove Quarry. The Geological Society of London.
context_page_description: Etheldred Benett was an early English geologist often credited with being the "First Female Geologist", having devoted much of her life to collecting and studying fossils that she discovered in South West England. She worked closely with many principal geologists and her fossil collection, considered one of the largest at the time, played a part in the development of geology as a field of science. Gideon Mantell, discoverer of the Iguanadon, was so inspired by Benett's work he named a Cretaceous ammonite after her called Hoplites bennettiana.[1]
context_section_description: Benett's contribution to the early history of Wiltshire geology is significant as she felt at ease with, and corresponded extensively with, fellow geologists such as George Bellas Greenough (the first president of the Geological Society), Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Samuel Woodward. She freely gave her ideas and items from her fossil collection to worthy causes such as museums, sending one to St. Petersburg. Through exchanging numerous fossils with Mantell, a thorough understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England was reached.
  Her work was recognised and appreciated by notable individuals of the time. Mantell described her as "A lady of great talent and indefatigable research," whilst the Sowerbys note her "labours in the pursuit of geological information have been as useful as they have been incessant".
  Benett produced the first measured sections of the Upper Chicksgrove quarry near Tisbury in 1819, drawn to scale, but unfortunately there is no scale indicated on the drawing. She called this "the measure of different beds of stone in Chicksgrove Quarry in the Parish of Tisbury". However, the stratigraphic section was published by naturalist James Sowerby without her knowledge. Later, she contradicted some of the Sowerby's conclusions based on her own research.
  In 1825, her painting of the meteorite which fell on County Limerick in September 1813 was deposited in Geological Society of London archives, presented in the University of Oxford by Reverend John Griffiths of Bishopstrow. The meteorite is 19 pounds in weight, and the streaked and dotted part represents the fracture. Because of her extensive collection, she wrote and privately published a monograph in 1831, which contains many of her drawings and sketches of mollusca and sponges such as her sketches of fossil Alcyonia (1816) from the Green Sand Formation at Warminster Common and the immediate vicinity of Warminster in Wiltshire. The Society holds two copies: one was given to George Bellas Greenough, and another to her friend Gideon Mantell. This work established her as a true, pioneering biostratigrapher, following but not always agreeing with the work of William Smith.
caption: Chicksgrove Quarry, 1815
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