I was
recently asked by a reviewer to amend the name of one of the animals my
colleagues and I were re-describing, Borealestes
mussetti. ‘It should be B. mussettae’
the reviewer explained, ‘as it honours Frances Mussett’. I’d encountered
Mussett’s name many times in my research, but through my own subconscious
gender bias, had assumed Mussett was a man. It turns out that the original description of Borealestes mussetti used
the wrong gender when erecting this species, and so Frances Mussett became
masculinised both through taxonomy and assumption.
This is one
of the subtler ways in which women can be written out of science, and out of
history. With International Women’s Day, 8th March, on our doorstep
yet again (and Women and Girls in Science Day just passed, 11th
February) it feels right not only to amend her namesake species (paper coming
soon!), but to share some of the achievements of Mussett’s scientific career,
and her role in early mammal palaeontology.
Despite being
on so many of the most significant papers on Mesozoic mammals, Frances Mussett
is poorly biographed. She is frequently mentioned as the assistant of Kenneth
Kermack (1919-2000), one of the big names in Mesozoic mammal palaeontology, but
seldom as a researcher in her own right. Mussett was a work colleague and
friend of the Kermacks (a married couple and both significant palaeontologists),
as well as carrying out field work with them. Her publications included co-authorship
of papers on two of the most important early mammaliaforms, Kuehneotherium and Morganucodon, and although she didn’t hold a PhD she was
undoubtedly a capable researcher and meticulous writer.
 |
| Reconstruction of Morganucodon by Bob Nicholls |
After her
bachelors degree at Birkbeck, Universoty of London, Mussett joined the thriving team of palaeontologists at University
College London (UCL), collecting fossils and publishing in the 1950s-70s. The
team included Professor Kenneth Kermack, Dr Doris Kermack, Jackie
Papworth, Patricia Ferguson (née Lees) and Mussett, the latter two women employed by the
department as Kenneth Kermack’s research technician and assistant, respectively.
While Ferguson and Mussett’s roles overlapped, Mussett was more heavily
involved in manuscript preparation, as well as some teaching. Mussett suffered from diabetes, and had to be strict in order to manage the condition. Restrictions at the time mean that due to her diabetes Musset was not allowed to drive, and so Lees did any driving necessary during fieldwork.
In the 1960s
the UCL team worked regularly at the Welsh fissure fills – a series of cracks
in Carboniferous rocks that are filled with sediment from the Late Triassic to
Early Jurassic. This sediment has proven rich in fossil material, and Kermack,
Kermack and Mussett named a new genus of one of the very earliest
mammaliaforms, Kuehneotherium, from among these finds (1968).
Kermack,
Mussett and Rigney (1973) were the first to realise that the Late Triassic and
Early Jurassic mammals with triconodont teeth (where the main cusps are
arranged in a line along the tooth axis) were a separate group from mammals
with the same tooth arrangement that lived later, in the Middle Jurassic to
Early Cretaceous. These were once collectively known as ‘Triconodonta’
(Osborne, 1888), but the team divided them into sub-groups, calling their
earlier ones Morganucodonta, and the later ones Eutriconodonta. This was an
important shift in our understanding of early mammal relationships, and later
it was realised the two suborders were completely distinct (Kielan-Jaworowska
et al., 2004).
One of the most famous and pivotal early
mammals is Morganucodon. It belongs
right at the base of the mammaliaform tree, is well-known in terms of fossil
material. Along with Kuehneotherium and
Sinoconodon, this genus is a
touchstone for Mesozoic mammal palaeontologists. Mussett co-authored two major monographs on Morganucodon’s skull and jaw with
Kenneth Kermack (1973,1981). Professor Kielan-Jaworowska, one of the most
important Mesozoic mammal palaeontologists of all time, said ‘in addition to
this wonderful skull, Kenneth and Frances had at their disposal thousands of
isolated bones of Morganucodon watsoni from
the fissure fillings in Wales’ (Kielan-Jaworowska, 2013: p80).
The research
Mussett was involved in through her role at UCL spanned much of the synapsid
family tree, including examining the jaw articulation of docodonts, erecting
the name Eupantotheria (Kermack and Mussett, 1958), and looking at the ears of
Permian synapsids (Kermack and Mussett, 1983). In the 1970s the UCL team began
work at Kirtlington Cement Quarry, a Middle Jurassic locality in England rich
in small vertebrate fossils. This led to publications on the mammals from this
site (Kermack, Lee Lees, Musset, 1987), as well as lissamphibians (Evans,
Milner and Mussett, 1988, 1990). As an important member of the team, Mussett
was part of the fieldwork, as well fullfilling her vital role assisting in
manuscript preparation and editing.
After the
Kermacks retired, Frances Mussett stayed on at UCL, carrying on teaching and
other work, but she never published independently. Upon retirement, she donated
many specimens to UCL as well as the Natural History Museum in London.
Collected between 1961 and 1994 and unusually well-documented (even including
the day of collection in some cases), these finds included material from the
Isle of Wight, such as the bones of marine reptiles. There were also specimens
of Morganucodon, Kuehneotherium and
the many other exceptional mammals and small vertebrates collected during her
career working alongside the Kermacks (many of these are part of the Kermack Collection). In 2003, Mussett was acknowledged in the
naming of Borealestes mussetti, to
recognise the ‘major participation of Dr [sic] Frances Mussett in the
accumulation of the Kirtlington fauna’ (Sigogneau-Russell, 2003).
 |
| The holotype lower molar tooth of Borealestes mussettae. |
And so we
come full circle. Here I am sitting in the Oxford Natural History Museum with
specimens of B. mussettae – now emended
to the feminine form – glinting up at me from under the lights of the
microscope. Mussett herself must have spent uncountable hours this way, gazing
down the eyepiece at tiny perfections of anatomy from the dawn of mammals. I
wonder if she ever saw her namesake species? Undoubtedly the many hours she and
women like her have spent contributing to science deserves recognition, not
just on International Women’s Day, but every day.
(Note: this blog was emended as previously Pat Lees and Patricia Ferguson were listed as seperate lab members, but they were one and the same: Patricia 'Pat' Lees married John Ferguson, a senior technician at UCL and took his surname. The university Mussett attended was aldo added, and the information about her diabetes. 10/3/19 Thanks to Pam Gill for this extra information.)
References
Evans SE, Milner AR and Mussett F. 1988. The earliest known salamanders (Amphibia, Caudata): a record from the Middle Jurassic of England. Geobios, 21: 539-552.
Evans S.E, Milner AR and Mussett F. 1990. A discoglossidfrog from the Middle Jurassic of England. Palaeontology, 33: 299-311.
Gabriel N. 2018. Specimen of the Week 337: The Mussett Collection.
Kielan-Jaworowska Z, Cifelli RL and Luo Z-X. 2004.
Mammals from the age of dinosaurs: origins, evolution, and structure. Columbia
University Press.
Kielan-Jaworowska Z. 2013. In pursuit of early mammals.
Indiana University Press.
Kermack KA and Mussett F. 1958. The jaw articulation of the Docodonta and the classification of Mesozoic mammals. Proceedings of the
Royal Society of London. Series B-Biological Sciences, 149(935), pp.204-215.
Kermack DM, Kermack KA and Mussett F. 1968. The Welsh pantothere Kuehneotherium praecursoris. Journal of the Linnean Society of
London Zoology, 47: 407–423.
Kermack KA, Mussett F and Rigney HW. 1973. The lower jaw of Morganucodon. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society,
53: 87–175.
Kermack KA, Mussett F and Rigney HW. 1981. The skull of Morganucodon. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 71: 1–158.
Kermack KA and Mussett F. 1983. The ear in mammal-likereptiles and early mammals. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 28.
Sigogneau-Russell D. 2003. Docodonts of the British Mesozoic. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 43: 357-374.
