Thread by @CofCNatHistory

#Juneteenth
Sharing a post we made last June.
How might racial injustice have anything to do with something as seemingly innocuous as paleontology? The study of fossils from the Charleston area began within 50 years of its founding as a plantation economy-based British colony. 🧵

Shortly after plantations were constructed, enslaved Africans began finding unusual items in the earth.
The first correctly identified vertebrate fossils from North America were dug up on the "Stono Plantation".

The plantation owners thought the teeth belonged to a giant that perished in Noah's flood; English botanist Mark Catesby, who was visiting, interviewed many of the enslaved Africans who had seen the teeth, & identified them as elephant teeth - which are very similar to mammoth 🦷

Catesby at some point had seen elephant teeth in a skull, and agreed with their assessment. This account eventually helped French anatomist Georges Cuvier propose the new idea that some species had gone extinct.

Other fossils found a century later at the dawn of American paleontology were discovered on plantations, & have differing quality of collection data; the early dolphin Agorophius pygmaeus was found and excavated by Francis Holmes and John Gibbes.

The account is fairly specific, but unlike this, the skull of the archaeocete whale Dorudon serratus was dug up by unnamed individuals from Mazyck Plantation near Monck’s Corner.

In all likelihood, Dorudon serratus, and a myriad of others excavated by nameless people during the early 19th century – were discovered and excavated by enslaved people.

Slaveowner and early Charleston naturalist Francis Holmes amassed a large collection of local vertebrate fossils and published a lavishly illustrated monograph with input from famed scientists Louis Agassiz and Joseph Leidy.

He became the Curator of the short-lived College of Charleston Museum (collection later absorbed by Charleston Museum). Holmes’ collection originated from many local plantations.

Other local naturalists were either slaveowners as well or came from slave-owning families with large fortunes; the privilege of possessing these fortunes allowing them the free time to devote to scientific research.

Even after the Civil War, the phosphate mines that were crucial for many fossil discoveries in the late 19th century almost exclusively hired African freedmen, who toiled under conditions that were not much better for very poor pay.

Many plantation-owning families, without the former source of income, turned to strip mining to keep the coffers full.
You will likely hear or read that racial injustice is pervasive & often even a shallow dive into history reveals it to be true, even in the case of paleontology.

For more on this topic, we recommend reading “Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815-1895” by Lester D. Stephens.