José Manuel Brandão

The Cape Mondego Mining District and Ernest Fleury’s (1878‑1958) technical contribution to the extractive industry and the local cement factory: a 1923 unpublished geological report

This paper focuses on the report produced by Ernest Fleury (1878-1958), professor at the “Instituto Superior Técnico” of Lisbon, following an early invitation of the conhttps://doi.org/10.14195/1645-2259_16_15 Versão integral disponível em digitalis.uc.pt R EV I STA D E H I STÓ R I A DA SO CI E DA D E E DA CU LT U R A | 16 344 cessionaire and a visit in April 1923 to the clay pits and quarries opened near Buarcos, Tavarede and in the mining district of Cape Mondego (Figueira da Foz). These open-pits supplied raw materials to the local ceramic, hydraulic lime and cement factories, which manufactured flagship products well received on the national market, but faced a serious and growing competition. The report describes the main characteristics of the explored deposits and gives an expert opinion about their potential, as part of a long collaboration that this important geologist had with the Cape Mondego industries. In this scope, besides its technical aura, this document should be read within a temporal context and as a contribution to the history of Applied Geology in Portugal, in which Fleury was a pioneer.

The Krantz collections of palaeontology held at the University of Coimbra (Portugal): a century of teaching and museum activities

The University of Coimbra holds a large repository of palaeontological collections bought from European mineral dealers, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among these specimens currently available at the Science Museum stand out three collections acquired from the Krantz house, between 1890 and 1913, for the Section of Mineralogy and Geology of the Natural History Museum. Their taxonomic diversity is high, as well as their geographic and stratigraphic wide-range origins, representing many classical locations and sedimentary formations of the European geology, and overseas countries. These collections have been used since long for teaching in practical classes of Natural Sciences at the University, using hands-on procedures. Together with other contemporary Krantz collections, known by several Iberian institutions, reveal an important heritage with both scientific and historical relevance that should be preserved, studied and reviewed from a scientific point of view.

Testemunhos 'geo-mineralógicos' do Império Português no Oriente nas coleções do Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência (Lisboa, Portugal)

The Mineralogical and Geological Museum of the Faculty of Sciences in Lisbon preserved until the fire of 1978 samples representing several geological units of Timor, collected willfully by agents of the colonial administration. The study of this unique collection in the mainland museums has helped to shed light on the geology of the most distant overseas Portuguese territory. The results were presented at the International Geological Congress, held in London in 1948. Most of the samples were lost in 1978, saving up however the collections sent by the governor of the province to the author of the study on the geology of Timor, former naturalist of the museum. This paper is based on scientific documentation and revisits the collections in order to contextualize its formation and composition, highlighting its role as landmark of sovereignty and the assertion of colonial science in the Portuguese Empire of the East.