One hundred and sixty-two years ago, some fossilised bones were collected from the shore beneath Black Ven at Charmouth in west Dorset.
They were sent to Richard Owen at the British Museum in London, who was at the time the acknowledged expert on fossils in Britain – among many other achievements, he had invented the word dinosaur.
These bones clearly belonged to a dinosaur, but were a jumble of the remains of several different animals.
Owen encouraged the finder, James Harrison, to look for more specimens in order to clarify matters.
Within a year, Harrison had recovered a near-complete skeleton of one animal.
Until that moment, dinosaurs had only been known from teeth and a few scattered bones, so their structure and appearance had been entirely speculative.
The world had its first dinosaur skeleton and it was in the hands of the man who had invented the word. »