When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction Of All Time, Michael J. Benton, c. 2003.

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
• named 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