RSE publishes journal issue dedicated to Dr Timothy Smithson
The RSE has published a new issue of Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The special Festschrift Issue is dedicated to Dr Timothy Smithson, celebrating his remarkable contributions to our understanding of the Early Carboniferous period in Scotland.
Dr Timothy Smithson’s work in discovering and describing some of the earliest animals to have emerged on land has had a significant impact on our understanding of Scotland from the Devonian to the Carboniferous period (300-420 million years ago). His work on fossil sites such as Dora Bone Bed near Cowdenbeath and East Kirkton Quarry in West Lothian has led to new tetrapods and fish being identified.
Smithson was a key researcher on the TW:eed Project, an international collaboration researching the first four-limbed vertebrates on land, many of which are found as fossils in Southern Scotland. Dr Timothy Smithson currently works within the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.
It is a great pleasure to dedicate the current issue of Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to Dr Tim Smithson. Tim’s research and publications have profoundly enhanced our understanding of evolution and environmental change and his influence is recognised and celebrated by the papers in this special issue. I congratulate the authors for their articles and also thank the editors and reviewers for their diligent efforts; together they faciliated this impressive tribute to Tim’s outstanding contributions to palaeontology and geology.
Building on Dr Timothy Smithson’s work, this Festschrift issue features papers focused on the environments these early animals lived in, and demonstrates the changes these animals’ brains and anatomies underwent as they transited to living on land, and adapted to new food sources. Within the issue are multiple papers illustrating how new scientific techniques can give us insight into anatomical features once thought unknowable for such ancient fossils, such as size and brain shape. This research contributes to our understanding of how lobe-finned fishes evolved into four-limed land animals
The issue also features papers describing what the world looked like when the first four-limbed animals (tetrapods) walked on land, specifically what the site of Willie’s Hole in south-eastern Scotland looked like, identifying plants and animals that lived there. Another paper shows how the study of microscopic spores and pollen can provide a timeline for when different tetrapods emerged onto land.
The Festschrift issue forms the entirety of the latest volume of Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The journal continues to accept papers in the field of earth science from academics and researchers
