The mystery of Captain Scott"s penguin eggs | @GrrlScientist

In the course of the past couple of days, I have been sorting and organising the pictures from my recent trip to London, and shared the over picture on twitter. In this photograph, you see a rather huge eggshell with a a lot more-or-less rectangular window cut into the shell. According to the museum label that accompanies this specimen, this is a single of three emperor penguin eggs that had been collected — fresh — by Captain Scott on his last expedition to Antarctica.

But since I had copied the tweet to the All-natural Historical past Museum, and because a knowledgeable individual was monitoring their twitter feed, I quickly realized that the museum tag accompanying this egg shell was incorrect: in fact, Bill Wilson, Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Henry “Birdie” Bowers really collected this egg in 1911.

But that is only a modest portion of the story. Because emperor penguins breed in the middle of the Antarctic winter, this meant the explorers had to hike 70 miles from Scott’s base camp on Ross Island to the penguin breeding colony on Cape Crozier, find and collect these eggs for the duration of the worst feasible time: not only was it perpetually dark, but they faced intense cold, effective winds and extreme blizzards. Why would 3 nicely-educated people knowingly topic themselves to the worst weather imaginable on Earth to acquire 5 fresh penguin eggs — two of which they accidentally broke during their return journey? Were these guys mad?

These three men may possibly have been mad, but the explanation for their five-week-long expedition was not. Penguin eggs had been crucial at that time due to the fact they had been believed to be integral to confirming a scientific hypothesis popularised by Ernst Haeckel. This hypothesis, famously known as “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, proposed that development from a fertilised egg by means of adulthood re-enacts evolution through phases that resemble the ancient ancestors that gave rise to that distinct species:

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.
George Romanes’ 1892 copy of Ernst Haeckel’s controversial — allegedly fraudulent — embryo drawings. Romanes’ version is usually attributed incorrectly to Haeckel. [Romanes, G. J. (1892). Darwin and Following Darwin. Open Court, Chicago.]
This picture is in the public domain due to its age.

This was a controversial hypothesis, but at least some scientists of that time imagined they could view the evolution of bird feathers from reptilian scales by documenting various stages of embryonic growth of a primitive bird. At the time, penguins had been imagined to be the most primitive of birds (really, this is not accurate) so this was the rationale for collecting penguin eggs for review as an alternative of, say, chicken eggs.

Sooner or later, these eggs were added to the collection at the Normal Background Museum. Twenty-three many years right after they had been collected — soon after the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” hypothesis had been discredited — a study was published by zoologist CW Parsons, who concluded that “they did not tremendously add to our comprehending of penguin embryology”.

Despite the fact that Wilson, Cherry-Garrard and Bowers miraculously managed to return to Scott’s base camp with three of the five eggs intact, probably most impressive factor of this journey was the mystery that the intrepid explorers had missed: they in no way noticed that each bird’s single precious egg, which was balanced on the parent’s feet, was really currently being incubated by the father.

Here’s a video of Douglas Russell, curator of eggs at the Natural Historical past Museum, telling us a little a lot more of the story about this certain egg:

The pencil drawing of the penguin embryo (over correct) is by Dorothy Thursby-Pelham.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

GrrlScientist can also be found here: Maniraptora. She’s extremely lively on twitter @GrrlScientist and at times lurks on social media: facebook, G+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

The mystery of Captain Scott"s penguin eggs | @GrrlScientist