February 10, 1879, died #OTD French paleontologist and entomologist François Louis Paul Gervaise, pioneer of French & Brazilian paleontology 🇧🇷 Fish-fossil of the Santana Formation, Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil 🐟

Lady Charlotte Hugonin Murchison died #OTD in 1869. An avid fossil collector, she introduced her husband to the world of geology & later illustrated his work. The "Ammonites Murchisonae" (now Ludwigia murchisonae) is named after her

Happy birthday to American composer and conductor John Williams, born February 8, 1932 🎂🦖

February 8, 1828, birthday of French author Jules Verne. In 1864 he imagined a journey to Earth's center based on the geological knowledge of his time. Some of his fiction - like caves of giant crystals - later became science 💎

February 8, 1825, birthday of #entomologist 🦋 Henry Walter Bates, he explored together with A.R. Wallace the Amazonas region Sometimes insects 🦋 and minerals💎 share surprising similarities:

February 8, 1627, gun powder is first used by Kaspar Weindl, a miner from Schwaz in Tyrol, for blasting rocks in the mine of Banská Stiavnica, Slovenia 💣

The first movie featuring an animated dinosaur is shown in public on February 8, 1914, as part of American cartoonist Winsor McCay's show in the Palace Theatre of Chicago 🎥🦖

February 8, 1807, birthday of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Artist who sculpted the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace & prehistoric grotesque of the NHM in London - the first scientific attempt to reconstruct the terrible animals of the past 🐉

After various cases of vandalism & bad sampling practice at the 4.1-4.3-billion-year-old Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt near Hudson Bay, members of the local community of Inukjuak decided to no longer allow sampling in the area & limiting access

February 7, 1984, Bruce McCandless becomes the first astronaut to fly freely in space in a special jetpack 🌎

February 7, 1784, after 8 months of activity the Laki-eruptions ends. This series of fissures erupting lava fountains up to 800 meters high was the strongest eruption in #Iceland's history and largest effusive eruption on land in the last 1.000 years🌋

February 6, 1922, birthday of James William Kitching, South African vertebrate paleontologist and regarded as one of the world’s greatest fossil finders 🦴

February 6, 1796, birthday of John S. Henslow, botanist & professor of mineralogy who introduced a young Charles #Darwin to the joys of #geology ⚒ Geological map of Anglesey made in 1821 by Henslow

February 6, 1952, King George VI dies & his daughter follows him as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms 👑 The Queen Elizabeth Subplate is a tiny tectonic plate in the Nunavut/NWT region named after the celebrations

February 6, 1913, birthday of British archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Mary Douglas Leakey. Her team discovered & excavated the famous 3.6-million-year-old Laetoli footprints 👣

In 1822, published the first full-length study of trilobites in which he classified a variety from Europe and North America and tried to group them based on age. This work contributed to later work on Paleozoic stratigraphy.

February 5, 1869, the world's largest alluvial gold nugget named "Welcome Stranger" - is found by John Deason and Richard Oates in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia. Almost 100 kg of pure gold it was sold for 9,000 £, almost 1.5 million of today dollars

February 5, 1808, birthday of German painter Carl Spitzweg. One of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era, he is famous for a series of paintings showing "odd characters & pass-time activities" including "the Geologist" (1854)