The first dinosaur was named 200 years ago. We know so much more now
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On Feb. 20, 1824, an English naturalist and theologian recognized that recently discovered fossils belonged to a huge bygone reptile, and gave it a formal scientific name: Megalosaurus, meaning 'great lizard.'
On Feb. 20, 1824, English naturalist and theologian William Buckland addressed the Geological Society of London, describing an enormous jaw and limb bones unearthed in a slate quarry in the village of Stonesfield near Oxford.
Buckland recognized that these fossils belonged to a huge bygone reptile, and gave it a formal scientific name: Megalosaurus, meaning "great lizard." With that, the first dinosaur was officially recognized, though the actual word dinosaur would not be coined until the 1840s.
"It was the beginning of our fascination with dinosaurs," University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte said. "His announcement opened the floodgates and started a fossil rush, and people went out looking for other giant bones in England and beyond."
In the intervening 200 years, dinosaur science has flourished, providing insight into what these creatures looked like, how they lived, how they evolved and what doomed them. Dinosaurs trod the planet from about 231 million years ago to 66 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era. Their bird descendants remain with us today.
"Our understanding of dinosaurs has changed significantly since the 19th century," said paleontologist Emma Nicholls of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, home to the Megalosaurus fossils Buckland studied.
"Buckland and other gentlemen naturalists of the early 19th century would be stunned at how much we now know about dinosaurs," Brusatte added.
Megalosaurus is a case in point. Buckland thought it was a lizard about 66 feet (20 meters) long, walked on four legs and could live on land or in the water. Scientists now know it was not quadrupedal and not a lizard, but belonged to the theropod group comprising meat-eating dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus and was about 30 feet (9 meters) long.
