FOX

Reverend William Fox was born on 9 August 1813 in Cumberland, England, the fourth of ten children to yeoman farmer John Fox, and his wife, Jane. He trained for the Anglican clergy at St Bees College and moved to the Isle of Wight in 1862, serving first at Brighstone and later at Kingston near Shorwell. Although he had no formal scientific training, he developed remarkable skill as a fossil collector and anatomical observer. He is not the same person as William Darwin Fox (1805–1880), Charles Darwin’s second cousin and a naturalist from Derbyshire who lived on Wight at the same time — a confusion that persisted for decades in older literature.

Fox was energetic, obsessive, and utterly devoted to fieldwork — a man who spent nearly every free hour scouring the island’s cliffs and beaches for what he affectionately called "old dragons". He maintained close relationships with leading palaeontologists such as Richard Owen and John Hulke, who relied heavily on his discoveries. His collecting was so prolific that it occasionally strained his clerical duties, but he remained a beloved local figure whose fossil-hunting routes are still part of Isle of Wight lore.

Fox discovered an extraordinary number of dinosaur fossils in the Wessex Formation, many of which became type or reference material for new species. Most of the dinosaurs named in his honour were based directly on his own finds, but Hypsilophodon foxii was a partial exception: it was named for the famous Mantell–Bowerbank block, discovered by local quarry workers and divided between Gideon Mantell and James Scott Bowerbank, with Fox later supplying additional comparative material. Over the course of the 19th century, five further dinosaur names were proposed in tribute to him. Although two were later superseded (Calamospondylus foxi) or overturned (Iguanodon foxii), the four still recognised — Hypsilophodon foxii, Polacanthus foxii, Eucamerotus foxi, and Calamosaurus foxi — represent a level of naming honour that exceeds what most professional palaeontologists receive, underscoring the scientific value of his finds. After his death, the main Fox collection — more than 500 specimens — was acquired by the Natural History Museum in London, where it remains a cornerstone of the museum’s Wessex Formation holdings. Other Fox-collected material, along with casts and interpretive displays based on his discoveries, now forms a central part of the Isle of Wight’s public palaeontological heritage at Dinosaur Isle Museum.