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. Such rarity had led to the extraordinary (and largely incorrect) concrete models of dinosaurs built in 1853 and 1854 that can be seen today at Crystal Palace Park in London.
The world had its first dinosaur skeleton and it was in the hands of the man who had invented the word.
rabblerabbler on August 30th, 2020 at 08:17 UTC »
"The first complete dinosaur skeleton ever identified has finally been studied in detail and found its place in the dinosaur family tree, completing a project that began more than 150 years ago!"
"Can I see it?"
"No."
datterdude on August 30th, 2020 at 07:50 UTC »
Bothers me that something of this grand of a statement is presented and not a single photograph of the bones either in pieces or their entirety in the whole of the article or any of the direct links mentioned in the article.
Hippiebigbuckle on August 30th, 2020 at 05:23 UTC »
Somehow that doesn’t seem like too long considering you paleontologists dig the bones up with brushes.