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Il passait ses vacances d’été sur le terrain, est retourné à de multiples reprises sur les falaises de Joggins, a visité plusieurs autres sites importants dans le monde et ramené fidèlement tous ses nouveaux trésors à l’Université. Sa curiosité ne se limitait pas non plus à la géologie et il a abondamment publié dans le domaine de la botanique, de la zoologie, de l’archéologie, de l’agronomie et de la linguistique.
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As a teenager in Nova Scotia, Dawson was a geology buff with an unquenchable curiosity. In the late 1830s the lad ventured into the “remarkable cliffs” of Joggins, Nova Scotia, where he found a wealth of fossils. In 1853, the famous British geologist Sir Charles Lyell visited Nova Scotia and was astounded by Dawson’s largely self-schooled scientific education. Dawson guided Lyell through the Joggins cliffs, where the pair identified what stands as the oldest known reptile, Hylonomus lyelli, groundbreaking evidence that reptiles, birds and mammals have common ancestry. (That discovery electrified the international scientific community and earned Joggins a mention in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.) Lowell recommended Dawson to the Geological Society of London, and the young autodidact soon began publishing papers in its Quarterly Journal.
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