In August 1819 William Daniel Conybeare, geologist, clergyman, and grandson of John Conybeare, bishop of Bristol (1692–1755), a notable preacher and divine was appointed lecturer to St Luke's, Brislington. He was elected FRS that December. With Henry De la Beche, a slave-owner turned scientist whom he had met at the Oxford club's Clifton meeting in 1818, he started work on the extinct marine reptiles ichthyosaurus communis and plesiosaurus (Conybeare's newly recognized genus). The two men helped inaugurate the Bristol Literary and Philosophical Institution in 1820 and also its associated society. Conybeare was encouraged by now living next to one of the earliest collectors of liassic reptiles, G. W. Braikenridge (1775–1856). This work culminated in three important papers by Conybeare, published between 1821 and 1824. About this time he also undertook a detailed survey of south-west coalfields with William Buckland—work published in 1824