Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Yorkshire’s Amazing Dinosaur Coast

James McKay

Abstract:
Yorkshire’s beautiful coastline is famous for its fossils of giant marine reptiles, along with ammonites and belemnites. It’s less well-known that Yorkshire’s fossils of ancient plants like conifers, horsetails and ferns have played a major role in our understanding of the Jurassic world.  Increasingly, an incredible number of dinosaur footprints are being discovered that reveal clues about the animals’ behaviour and lifestyles. Taking us right up to date, there is new understanding that an episode of extreme climate change took place here, with the rocks on the coast recording life before, during and after the climate change event. In this talk, artist James Mckay will take participants on a journey through the prehistoric world featured in his illustrations for a new guidebook for children: ‘Yorkshire’s Amazing Dinosaur Coast’.

James Mckay is an artist and science communicator who collaborates with scientists to create paintings of dinosaurs, other prehistoric animals and their environments. His work has been featured in the media and in popular books such as Dean Lomax’s ‘Dinosaurs of the British Isles’.

7pm in the Tempest Anderson Lecture Theatre in the Yorkshire Museum on Tuesday 15 July.

Image ©James McKay

Member’s report

James McKay’s presentation described Yorkshire’s geology and palaeontology from the Lower Jurassic and the Pleistocene to Holocene. He studies descriptions of the fossils and collaborates with palaeontologists to work out the appearances, relative sizes, habitats and inferred behaviours of the fossilised animals. He then paints scientifically accurate scenes showing co-existing animal and plant assemblages in different eras. He uses these beautiful and informative illustrations in publications, displays such as the Star Carr exhibition in the Yorkshire Museum and guided walks.

Yorkshire coast geology demonstrates extreme changes in conditions during the Lower Jurassic from shallow seas in the Pliensbachian, to a deep ocean basin forming in the Toarcian. During that time a volcanic event occurred at the edge of the supercontinent Pangaea. It caused an enormous increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, reduction of marine oxygen, and sea level rise. The fossil record of these times shows a sharp reduction in species and recovery with new species taking 7 million years.

In McKay’s guidebook for children, ‘Yorkshire’s Amazing Dinosaur Coast’, Lower Jurassic terrestrial and marine animals such as dinosaurs are painted behaving as predicted from their skeletal and trace fossils, amongst the plant species which formed their habitats. Lions and hyenas from the Holocene in Yorkshire are also illustrated – examples of large animals that lived in similar climates to today’s, but with their slow reproductive rates (think elephants) could be hunted to extinction by tiny populations of homo species.

The study of extinctions in both the Toercian and the Holocene provides insights into possible effects of climate change on nature in the future.

Heather Marvin