‘Lost’ Darwin fossils found

SCIENTISTS have found scores of fossils which evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 160 years.

Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said yesterday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a “gloomy corner” of the British Geological Survey centre.

Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labelled “C Darwin Esq”.