Dentures carved from the tooth of a hippo

This month’s object from Scarborough Museums and Galleries looks like a fairly standard set of dentures. A little battered and stained, yes – their owner had clearly never heard of Steradent – but then they are well over 150 years old.

They belonged to an enterprising Victorian physician, Dr William Harland (1787-1866), who ran his own medicinal baths on Vernon Place in Scarborough, and was Mayor of Scarborough on three occasions.

When his teeth began to decay he made himself a new set – by carving the tooth of a hippopotamus.

They are currently on display in the Rotunda Museum, where you can also see a fossilised hippo tooth from the Pleistocene era – and believe it or not, it was found in Yorkshire. Hippos were amongst many unlikely animals which roamed our county millions of years ago, alongside elephants, rhinos, hyenas, bison and giant deer.

The most famous discovery of fossilised remains of such animals was made by theologian, geologist and palaeontologist William Buckland, who lived from 1784 to 1856 so was a close contemporary of Dr Harland’s.

Buckland discovered a treasure trove of fossilised bones and teeth at Kirkdale Cave, not far from St Gregory’s Minster near Helmsley – the cave, high up in a riverside cliff, can still be seen today.

It was originally discovered by workmen in the summer of 1821; they used some of the bones they found to fill potholes in a nearby road where a local naturalist spotted them and realised they weren’t exactly run of the mill!

Word got around the scientific community, and Buckland visited in the December of that year to analyse the cave’s fascinating contents – and his conclusion must have been challenging to him as both theologian and palaeontologist.

He determined that the bones and teeth had been left there by hyenas who had dragged their scavenged prey to their den, and not, as he first thought, washed in by a Biblical flood which had collected animal remains from distant lands.

His detailed analysis and meticulous reconstruction of an ancient ecosystem was very much admired at the time – his Kirkdale paper won him the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, awarded since 1731 for ‘outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science’; other recipients have included Captain James Cook and Stephen Hawking.

You can find out more about the role Yorkshire has played in the history of palaeontology at the upcoming Yorkshire Fossil Festival (September 16-18), based at Scarborough Spa but with events also taking place in the town centre, at the Rotunda and the Stephen Joseph Theatre, and along the seafront – find out more here: https://yorkshirefossilfestival.co.uk

Scarborough Museums and Galleries, which supports the festival and runs the Rotunda Museum, Scarborough Art Gallery and Woodend, is a member of the Museums Association and adheres to its code of ethics: https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/ ethics/

• These hippo tooth dentures are on display in the Rotunda Museum. Credit: David Chalmers Photography Ltd.