| Description | Side view of the fossil head of a sea turtle named by Richard Owen FRS (1804-1892) in 1842. Inscribed below in ink: "Chelone pulchriceps. Owen. No.3. side view". Not signed or dated.
The Rev. Thomas Image, Rector of Whepstead, was a fossil collector and Fellow of the Geological Society. His collection was sold to the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge.
This specimen was commented upon by Richard Owen in A history of British fossil reptiles ...(1849), section II chapter 1, p.162
"With the exception of a few more or less mutilated mandibles, no parts of the
skull of a Chelonian reptile have been, hitherto, discovered in the chalk itself, either
at Burham or elsewhere in England ; but I have had the opportunity, through the
kindness of the Rev. Thomas Image, M.A., of Whepstead, of examining and comparing the fossil cranium of a small turtle from the green-sand which underlies the chalk. The specimen was discovered near Barnwell, in Cambridgeshire..."
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