While the story of the dinosaurs is a tale that encompasses almost 240 million years of our planet’s history, humankind’s understanding of these enigmatic beasts is something of a novel revolution.
For centuries, the fossils of extinct animals presented an enigma to early civilizations. While it may be easy to look back and deem these cultures foolish, it’s important to remember that many key scientific concepts were ludicrous at best and blasphemous at worst. Instead, our ancestors relied on religion to fill their gaps of understanding by using texts and myths to inform the fossils they discovered or by using the fossils themselves to create new myths to incorporate into their worldview.
This outlook on our planet’s natural history began to undergo massive changes at the dawn of the 19th century. First, advancements in geology by figures like James Hutton introduced the concepts of deep time and relative time, suggesting the Earth was much older than previously interpreted. Next, the study of vertebrate and invertebrate anatomy became much more refined and advanced, allowing scientists to compare the structure and function of various species and understand how they were related. The man to first connect these fields was French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who (amongst other things) proposed the concept of extinction in 1796 and laid the groundwork for paleontology to exist. Not long thereafter, Cuvier’s ideas would spread across Europe and spark the beginnings of dinosaur paleontology in earnest.
Cuvier’s ideals were particularly insightful in England, where fragments of large bones had been emerging for centuries. Beginning in the 17th century, work in the Stonesfield limestone quarry of the Oxfordshire region started exposing fossils of Jurassic-aged animals. At first, English historians and naturalists believed these bones belonged to the giant humans referenced in the bible, resulting in the broken end of a dinosaur femur being named Scrotum humanum in 1763. (I wish that was a joke; it most definitely is not!). While losing a fossil specimen is never a good thing, the loss of Scrotum’s holotype – amongst other things – has ensured that this name is considered invalid for good.
Though the fossil of Scrotum humanum was lost, the Stonesfield site continued to produce bones. Many found their way to the collections of the nearby Oxford University, including a specimen bought on behalf of the university in 1797 that comprised the dentary, or lower jawbone, of a predatory animal with a handful of teeth still in place. These fossils would remain in place, catching dust for decades until they caught the eye of an esteemed and eccentric scientist in 1815.
Enter William Buckland, a man renowned for his knowledge of all things related to natural history. Though he was appointed as the “Reader of Mineralogy” at Oxford in 1813, his multidiscipline approach allowed him to incorporate topics related to paleontology in his extravagant lectures. His eccentricity was apparent to many, for this was a man who taught lectures on horseback and whose appetite for the unorthodox was so voracious that he ate the mummified heart of French King Louis XIV!
Casual cannibalism aside, Buckland was a brilliant scientist with tremendous connections in the scientific community. His access to Oxford’s collections allowed him to examine many specimens, including the bones collected from Stonesfield. At this point, the remains consisted of the jawbone discovered in 1797, a hip, a hind limb, and a handful of vertebrae. While Buckland couldn’t decipher the remains in front of him, he was in contact with someone who could: Georges Cuvier. While the Napoleonic Wars delayed Cuvier’s trip to Oxford until 1818, his arrival finally brought clarity to the Stonesfield fossils: they belonged to a reptile unlike any alive.
For the next few years, Buckland worked alongside fellow paleontologist William Conybeare to describe the remains of Stonesfield’s giant reptile. Buckland and Conybeare would run with the ‘giant reptile’ moniker when considering the name of their fossil, translating the phrase into Latin to produce the name Megalosaurus. After a brief hiccup in 1822 when an unpublished Megalosaurus article intended for Cuvier was published accidentally, Buckland was finally ready to present his findings after becoming president of the Geological Society of London in 1824.
On this day 200 years ago, February 20th, 1824, Buckland introduced the Megalosaurus to the Geological Society of London in a paper entitled “Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield.” In the seven-page article, Buckland describes the bones of Megalosaurus that were discovered and their state, proclaiming the reptile to have a “length exceeding 40 feet and a bulk equal to that of an elephant.”[i] His paper also describes additional fossils found at Stonesfield, including rare remains of Jurassic mammals, and makes mention of fellow English paleontologist Gideon Mantell’s discovery of a second fossil reptile from the Tilgate Forest reserve of Sussex.
Buckland didn’t know it, but his paper provided the first description of a dinosaur in scientific literature. His work opened the floodgates for dinosaurian paleontology, inspiring paleontologists to describe the remains of these enigmatic fossil reptiles for the next two centuries and into the present.
Much has changed in the field since Buckland’s description of Megalosaurus. We now know that Megalosaurus wasn’t quite elephant-sized, as most estimations project its length to be around 6 meters (20 feet) on average and a weight of 700kg (1200 lb)[ii]. It was not an aquatic predator, as proposed by Buckland, but rather a terrestrial dinosaur that stalked the many islands of Jurassic Europe. The reptile from Tilgate Forest was not a whale-sized behemoth, but rather another dinosaur that Mantell named Iguanodon a year later in 1825.
Using the fossils of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, plus the later discovered Hylaeosaurus, English anatomist Richard Owen would coin the term Dinosauria in 1841. In the coming years, fossils from across the world were recognized as belonging to this illustrious clade, producing the tremendous diversity of dinosaurs we see today. Though the fossils of Megalosaurus described by Buckland may not be all that impressive compared to the fossils of dinosaurs we have now, their significance is unmatched.
So, take today to celebrate! 200 years ago, William Buckland ushered in the scientific age of dinosaurs, one that won’t stop anytime soon!
Thank you for reading this article! The naming of Scrotum humanum is something of a dark spot in the history of paleontology, one not soon forgotten by the folks here at Max’s Blogosaurus! If you would like to read a more in-depth recounting of this strange moment in dinosaurian lore, read about it here at Max’s Blogosaurus!
I do not take credit for any images found in this article. All images belong to the illustrators and sources listed.
Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, found here.
Works Cited:
[i] BUCKLAND, WILLIAM. “XXI.—Notice on The Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield.” Transactions of the Geological Society of London, vol. 1, no. 2, Geological Society of London, Jan. 1824, pp. 390–96. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1144/transgslb.1.2.390.
[ii] Paul, Gregory S. The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, 2016.
Prothero, Donald R. The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries. Columbia University Press, 2019.
DeLong, William. “William Buckland: The Victorian Zoologist Who Ate Almost Anything.” All That’s Interesting, 19 Aug. 2019, allthatsinteresting.com/william-buckland.
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