Several fossils used by Charles Darwin have been uncovered.  They were found at the British Geological Survey (BGS) after being considered lost for 165 years.

Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a palaeontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London was in the BGS archive looking for carboniferous fossil-wood specimens when he made the discovery.

“I spotted some drawers marked “unregistered fossil plants”,” he recalls.”‘I can’t resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop!”

Inside were hundreds of fossil plants, polished into thin translucent sheets known as ‘thin sections’ and captured in glass slides so they could be studied under a microscope.

Falcon-Lang’s jaw dropped even further when he began to take out the slides. One of the first he looked at was labelled ‘C. Darwin Esq.’

The fossils have been photographed and are now available for viewing by the public.