Randolph Kirkpatrick (1863 – 1950) was a British spongiologist,

cnidariologist A cnidariologist is a zoologist specializing in Cnidaria, a group of freshwater and marine aquatic animals that include the sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish. Examples * Edward Thomas Browne (1866-1937) * Henry Bryant Bigelow (1879-1967) * Rand ...

and bryozoologist. He was assistant keeper of lower

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

at the British

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

from 1886 until his retirement in 1927. Kirkpatrick published a limited number of papers on the

sponges Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

and the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

. However, his most significant work was carried out on ''Merlia'', a species of coralline sponge (a sponge which secretes a coral-like

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

). He was the first to correctly interpret these unusual sponges, but his work was largely ignored until the 1960s when T. F. Goreau and his colleagues W. D. Hartman and

Jeremy Jackson Jeremy Dunn Jackson (born October 16, 1980) is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Hobie Buchannon on the television show ''Baywatch''. Career Television Jackson appeared in 159 episodes of the TV series ''Baywatch' ...

rediscovered the coralline sponges in the reefs of the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. It is likely that his important work on the coralline sponges was dismissed by his contemporaries due to his having published a book containing unconventional ideas about the history of life on earth. This was the self-published ''The Nummulosphere: an account of the Organic Origin of so-called Igneous Rocks and Abyssal Red Clays'' (1912), printed in four volumes by Lamley & Co. of South Kensington. Kirkpatrick's theory proposed that Earth was originally covered with water and that larger

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

foraminifera of the genus ''Nummulites'' eventually accumulated into a layer which he called 'The Nummulosphere'. He additionally proposed that all the Earth's crustal rocks were subsequently derived from this "nummulosphaeric" layer and in his books he included illustrations of supposed nummulitic textures he had observed in granites and even meteorites. In his later years he admitted that this was erroneous, and that he had been misled by "the architecture of protoplasm".

References

External links

*
Text of "The Nummulosphere"
(at archive.org) 1863 births 1950 deaths Cnidariologists Spongiologists Byrozoologists {{UK-scientist-stub