Robert Plot (1640-1696)	Back     Site Map
	Robert Plot was an important, if at times misguided, figure in the field of Natural History. The first keeper of the hallowed Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the first professor of ‘Chymistry’ at Oxford University, Plot was a man of ideas and of energy. Plot was born in Sittingbourne, Kent in 1640. He entered Oxford University via Magdalen Hall (now Magdalen College) in 1658, proceeding to obtain a BA in 1661, an MA in 1664 and a BCL and DCL in 1671. His tutors most notably included Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. In 1670, he published a list of “Quaer’s to be propounded to the most ingenious of each County in my Travels through England”, which was in effect a prelude to his later Natural Histories, in which he travelled the kingdom 'in search of natural and artificial curiosities, knowledge of which could improve the pleasure, the knowledge and the commerce of man'. In these books (the first of which being The Natural History of Oxfordshire, published 1677) Plot outlined his ideas about the nature of fossils. His background in chemistry perhaps contributed toward leading him to dismiss any ideas of them being organically formed. He proposed instead that they were inorganically precipitated minerals that were zoomorphic only coincidentally. Neoplatonic thought, as was in vogue in Robert Plot’s time, put forward the idea that some universal force was responsible for many of the natural world’s similarities. Plot argued that these fossils were just evidence that the process of crystallization was molded by these same hidden forces. Some of these zoomorphic structures, he argued, crystallized in a similar way to frozen urine. Somewhat inconsistently, perhaps, Plot then conceded that perhaps some fossils were biogenic, as he was faced with what we now know to be the femur of a Megalosaurus. Plot was given the fossil by a Thomas Pennyston after its discovery in the Parish of Cornwell. Its internal structure clearly showed the presence of bone marrow, and it was this more intricate similarity with animal bone that convinced Robert Plot of its biological affinities. Having decided that this bone ‘bucked the trend’ and was indeed the petrified remains of some great animal, he then set about attributing it to something. Firstly, he thought it may have been from an elephant, brought over to England, but after comparison with modern elephants decided against it. Instead, he somewhat bizarrely put forward the idea that it was the femur of a giant. He stated that ‘that there have been Men and Women of proportionable Stature in all Ages of the World, down even to our own Days’, and saw no reason to question the likelihood that his fossil was not of a preposterously large human at all, but instead one of the feared Jurassic carnivore Megalosaurus.  The Megalosaurus fossil was later described by Richard Brookes in 1763 (figure. 1.), and given the now defunct name ‘Scrotum humanum’, due to its similarity to a pair of testicles. Robert Plot also described a double sunset in Staffordshire, as well as proclaiming the existence of a long-forgotten network of tunnels under Britain’s soils. References and Further Reading Keller, A.G. 1981. Plot, Robert. pp. 40-41. In Gillespie, C.C. (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 11. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, xiii + 618 pp. Rudwick, M.J.G. 1972. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. MacDonald, London; America Elsevier, New York, 287 pp. A.  MacGregor   The Ashmolean Museum: A brief history of the Museum and its collections (2001) Plot, R. 1674? Quaer's to be propounded to the most ingenious of each County in my Travels through England. Oxford. 3 pp. Plot, R. 1677. The Natural History of Oxford-shire, being an essay towards the Natural History of England. Printed at the Theater, Oxford. 358 pp., 16 pls. Plot, R. 1679? Enquiries to be propounded to the most Ingenious of each County in my Travels through England and Wales, in order to their History of Nature and Arts. Oxford. 4 pp. Plot, R. 1686. The Natural History of Stafford-shire. Printed at the Theater, Oxford. 450 pp., 38 pls.	Fig. 1.