Robert Darwin of Elston, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetRobert Darwin of Elston
English lawyer and physician
Date of Birth: 
About Robert Darwin of Elston
- Robert Darwin of Elston (12 August 1682 — 20 November 1754) was an English lawyer and physician.
- He was the father of English physician Erasmus Darwin, and a great-grandfather of the famous English naturalist and geologist Charles Robert Darwin, best known for his contributions to evolution.
- It is with Robert Darwin of Elston that many biographies of his great-grandson begin. In 1719 Darwin was instrumental in bringing the attention of the Royal Society to the first remains of a Jurassic reptile to be found: a fossilised plesiosaur, that would originally have been about 3 m long.
- The stone came from a quarry at Fulbeck and had been used, with the fossil on its underside, to reinforce the edge of a well in Elston.
- After the strange bones it contained had been discovered, it was displayed in the garden of the local parsonage by the rector, the Rev.
- John South, as a curiosity.
- Darwin communicated with William Stukeley who obtained the fossil for the Royal Society and described it in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, calling it "a Rarity, the like whereof has not been observ'd before in this Island".
- Stukeley speculated on the reasons for the fossil's presence in rock, mentioning the Biblical flood: he said that it was not human, but was probably a crocodile or porpoise.
- The specimen is today on display in the Natural History Museum as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, with the original registration number R.1330.
- It is the earliest discovered more or less complete fossil reptile skeleton in a museum collection. Darwin married Elizabeth Hill (1702-1797) on 1 January 1724 at Balderton, Nottinghamshire.
- They had four sons and three daughters: Robert Waring Darwin of Elston (1724-1816), lawyer and botanist Elizabeth Darwin (15 September 1725 – 8 April 1800) William Alvey Darwin (1726-1783) Anne Darwin (12 November 1727 – 3 August 1813) Susannah Darwin (10 April 1729 – 29 September 1789) John Darwin (1730 – 1805), rector of Elston Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the poet, philosopher, physician, etc.
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