Abstract In 1884, Arthur Smith Woodward first met Charles Dawson, a solicitor and industrious amateur collector, antiquarian, geologist, archaeologist and palaeontologist. This began a long association and friendship centred on their mutual interest in palaeontology and human evolution. Dawson devised a complicated plot focused around the ancient river gravel deposits at Barkham Manor near the village of Piltdown, Sussex. In these gravels he planted stone tools and fossil mammal remains together with the lower jaw of an ape and numerous modern human cranial bones to deceive the scientific establishment into believing an early human ancestor had been found in his own back yard. Cleverly devised to provide anatomists and archaeologists with evidence for concepts that they wanted to believe were true, Dawson fuelled numerous contentious debates among scientists that quickly attracted international attention. Nothing could be more unfortunate than such a respectable scientist as Arthur Smith Woodward being taken in by the events of 1912, and then subsequently swept along by them well into his retirement right up to the time of his death in 1944.

Abstract The last 40 years of the 19th century saw a great expansion in the study of fossil plants. This was, in part, brought about by the growth of coal mining and the consequent increase in the discovery of plant remains from the Carboniferous Coal Measures. The interest in the evolution of life forms following Darwin’s theories, together with the development of the petrological microscope, also had their effect on the growth of this discipline. Among the pioneers of this growth of palaeobotany was the Canadian John William Dawson, who was the first to have a clear understanding of some of the earliest land plants from the Devonian. William Crawford Williamson, another of the 19th century pioneers, was also instrumental in forwarding the interests and careers of the two great palaeobotanists with which this paper is concerned — Dukenfield Henry Scott and Sir Albert Charles Seward. Scott was the son of a distinguished architect, who studied botany as a boy and returned to the science after studying in Germany. Through Williamson’s influence he later took up palaeobotany, a field in which he was to distinguish himself, eventually becoming Honorary Director of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew. His contributions to the science of palaeobotany were considerable. So were those of Albert Charles Seward, his near contemporary, who attained a high position and influence in palaeobotany through his own hard work and undoubted talents. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1898, and received a knighthood in 1936. He was Master of Downing College, Cambridge for 21 years from 1915, and in 1924 he became Vice Chancellor of the university. He wrote of the palaeobotany of many parts of the world, including Antarctica. Both Scott and Seward can be regarded as the forerunners of the great growth of the palaeobotanical work during the 20th century.

Abstract The Pitkin Formation is a Late Mississippian (Chesterian) high-energy marine oolitic-bioclastic limestone. The original mineralogy of Pitkin ooids varied across the Pitkin carbonate shelf. In the eastern part of the study area, originally aragonite ooids deposited in shoal and shoreface environments. These ooids are presently replaced by calcite and exhibit high Sr and low Mg concentrations. Originally calcite ooids in overlying lagoonal facies are composed of well-preserved, radial fabric. These ooids contain low Sr and high Mg values. Similar characteristics indicate that ooids in the central and western part of the study area were all originally calcite. An early marine nonferroan low-Mg calcite cement occurs as fibrous-to- bladed circumgranular crust, equant mosaic pore fill, and syntaxial overgrowth on echinoderm bioclasts. An extensive early dissolution event related to meteoric diagenesis dissolved aragonite and high- and low-Mg calcite components and created moldic and vuggy porosity. A late burial ferroan calcite occurs as mosaic and poikilotopic cements filling intergranular and moldic pores. Early marine and late burial calcite cementation eliminated virtually all porosity within Pitkin grainstones.