Steve Etches

Steve Etches, MBE (born in 1949) is an English plumber, fossil collector and preparator in Kimmeridge, on the Isle of Purbeck. From an early age on, Etches began to find, collect and restore the fossils he found on the Jurassic Coast. His collection is now housed in a museum called The Etches Collection which was purpose-built, both to house the collection and to replace the deteriorating local village hall. Etches has won many prizes for his palaeontology and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in 2014.[1][2][3][4] In 2017, he also was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Southampton.[5] On 22 April 2019, he appeared on the podcast Trees A Crowd with David Oakes.[6]

Etches in the workshop at The Etches Collection in Kimmeridge, Dorset
View of the main gallery in The Etches Collection

Significant finds

Etches has been collecting for over 40 years, and in this time he has amassed an important collection of rare and unique fossils. His first find was a flint fossil sea urchin which he found at age 5. His collection now contains about 2,800 specimens, many of which are scientifically significant.[7]

Ammonite eggs

Whilst cephalopod eggs had previously been described twice within scientific literature,[8][9] the discovery of 8 clusters of eggs in association with perisphinctid ammonite by Steve Etches, Jane Clarke and John Callomon in 2008[10] provides the best preserved example of this rare glimpse into the life cycle of ammonites. The eggs show some phosphatic films suggesting that the eggs were already decaying at their time of burial.

The skull of Cuspicephalus, a pterosaur found at Kimmeridge Bay[11]

Cuspicephalus

The skull of the pterosaur Cuspicephalus was collected from the Kimmeridge Clay by Etches in December 2009 and then named by him and David Martill in 2013. Pterosaurs are considered rare within the Kimmeridge Clay[12] as the clays were deposited a considerable distance from land and so such finds are thought to result from crash landings, possibly as a result of poor weather. Such a landing on water would be likely be fatal to pterosaurs as their thin, hollow bones would be prone to breaking on impact with the sea, as seen in other pterosaur specimens collected by Steve.

Other finds

Other finds by Etches include an exceptionally well-preserved dragonfly wing; the oldest recorded barnacle displaying colour and a new genus of barnacle that has since been found living in the sea around Japan. A Jurassic species of ray, Kimmerobatis etchesi and a deep diving ichthyosaur Thalassodraco etchesi was named in his honour.[13] These specimens can all be seen in The Etches Collection museum.

Awards

References
  1. New museum at Kimmeridge for Etches Collection of fossils, BBC, 21 October 2016
  2. Alice Shaw (12 October 2016), "Amateur fossil hunter who spent 30 years amassing 2,000 specimens wins grant to build £5m Jurassic Coast museum", The Daily Telegraph
  3. Harriet Sherwood (4 November 2016), "Fossil fever: exploring Dorset's Jurassic Coast with Steve Etches", The Guardian
  4. Ted Nield (9 October 2012), Kimmeridge legend, The Geological Society
  5. Plumber-turned-palaeontologist awarded Honorary Doctorate, University of Southampton, 18 August 2017
  6. Trees A Crowd
  7. "Series 1: Episode 12". Hugh's Wild West. Series 1. Episode 12. 24 March 2018. BBC Television. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  8. Müller, A. H. (1969). "Nautiliden-Kiefer (Cephalopoda) aus dem Oberen Muschelkalk des germanischen Triasbeckens". Monatsberichte der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse.
  9. Lehmann, U (1967). "Ammoniten mit Kieferapparat und Radula aus Lias-Geschieben". Paläontologische Zeitschrift. 41 (1–2): 38–45. doi:10.1007/BF02998547. S2CID 128711331.
  10. Etches, Clarke and Callomon (October 2008). "Ammonite eggs and ammonitellae from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dorset, England". Lethaia. 42 (2): 204–217. doi:10.1111/j.1502-3931.2008.00133.x.
  11. Martill, David; Etches, Steve (2013), "A new monofenestratan pterosaur from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Kimmeridgian, Upper Jurassic) of Dorset, England" (PDF), Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 58 (2): 285–294
  12. Martill, David; Etches, Steve (2011). "A new monofenestratan pterosaur from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Upper Jurassic, Kimmeridgian) of Dorset, England". Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. doi:10.4202/app.2011.0071.
  13. Underwood, Charlie J.; Claeson, Kerin M. (19 July 2017). "The Late Jurassic ray Kimmerobatis etchesi gen. et sp. nov. and the Jurassic radiation of the Batoidea" (PDF). Proceedings of the Geologists' Association. 130 (3–4): 345–354. doi:10.1016/j.pgeola.2017.06.009. ISSN 0016-7878. S2CID 90691006.
  14. "The Geological Society of London - 2023 awards and funds winners".
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