Bartholomew James Sulivan's discovery of fossil vertebrates in the Tertiary beds of Patagonia
While commanding a Royal Navy survey of the Falkland Islands in 1845, Bartholomew James Sulivan discovered and collected fossil mammals at Rio Gallegos, Patagonia. Described the following year by Richard Owen, Sulivan's specimens comprised the first collection taken from what would later be designated the Santa Cruz beds (early-middle Miocene), the most prolific fossil mammal horizon in South America and the oldest discovered by Sulivan's time. Unfortunately, Charles Darwin's conservative estimate of the age of the fossils delayed the full appreciation of Sulivan's discovery. Sulivan was only moderately successful at attracting interest in his discovery among British naturalists. By the time that the first extensive collections of Santa Cruz fossil mammals were made by Argentine paleontologists Carlos and Florentino Ameghino, in the 1890s, Sulivan's pioneering role in the history of South American vertebrate paleontology had been overshadowed and all but forgotten. An examination of Sulivan's experience provides a general model for the process whereby some contributors to science descend from initial fame to lasting obscurity.