When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, Michael J. Benton, c. 2003.
Incredible history of paleontology.
Giant Saurians
First dinosaur -- p. 19
- William Buckland, 1784 - 1856, Professor of Geology, University of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church
- had been brought bones from Middle Jurassic rocks north of Oxford, ~ 1818
- classified the animal as a giant reptile, probably a lizard, 40 feet long
- after six years of consideration, published his findings
- called it: Megalosaurus, "big reptile"
- first dinosaur to be described formally
Second dinosaur:
- at the same time, independently, his "exact" contemporary
- Gideon Mantell, 1790 - 1852
- country physician in Sussex
- made a visit to a patient near Cuckfield, 1820 / 1821
- his wife, may, discovered some teeth from the Wealden beds, early Cretaceous
- rhinocerus-like, plant-eating animal; seemed similar to the iguana
- called it: Iguanodon ("iguana tooth")
- thus, second dinosaur named
Third dinosaur:
- Hylaeosaurus
- from the same Wealden beds that produced Iguanodon; southern England
- Mantell named it in 1833
- a giant planteater
More dinosaurs named in the 1830s:
- two from the Triassic:
- Thecodontosaurus
- named in the 1836 by Henry Riley and Samuel Stutchbury from Bristol, southwest England;
- Plateosaurus
- names in 1837 by Hermann von Meyer from southern Germany
- Cetiosaurus
- the sixth dinosaur to be named
- a giant planteater, from the Middle Jurassic of Oxfordshire
But still no one knew much more than that.
Richard Owen, the "British Cuvier" [the latter from France] -- p. 30
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