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The Birth of the Term – Dinosauria

The term Dinosaur, was first officially coined by the Lancashire born, English anatomist, Richard Owen in 1842. He was to be knighted later in his life for his work in developing the embryonic Earth sciences and for helping to found the British Museum, known today as the Natural History Museum of London. Owen had been given the task of classifying the strange fossil remains that had been discovered over the years in southern England. He had correctly deduced that these bones represented reptiles; but their size and scale was like nothing known to the scientists of the late Georgian and early Victorian eras. Using the conventions laid down for formal scientific description, Owen concluded that these strange fossil remains represented reptiles so different from those alive at the time that they merited their own taxonomic Order. He chose the name Dinosauria using the Greek for “fearfully great lizards”, or as many people refer to dinosaurs today as – “terrible lizards” especailly dinosaurs for kids.

Owen, in what many academics now believe was a deliberate attempt on his part to gain credit for the work of others or in a bid to discredit his contemporaries, stated that he had used the term Dinosauria as early as 1841, several months before the term was officially accepted.

At the time the Order was announced there were very few recognised members of the Dinosaur family, barely a handful in fact, but with the opening up of the western United States and Canada, soon a huge number of dinosaur discoveries were being made and many more dinosaur genera were added to this ancient group of reptiles scientific classification.

In England during the mid to late Victorian era, studying the natural world was thought to be an appropriate pastime for the learned gentry, the clergy and other educated classes. With this national interest and against the controversial backdrop of the development of Darwinism (the ground breaking book on natural selection written by Charles Darwin was first published in 1859); museums and other bodies arranged displays of fossils of long-extinct, ancient creatures. These proved very popular and indeed a number of travelling shows peddling a range of “curiosities” including dinosaur fossils imported from the United States toured the country helping to cater for the Victorians interest and passion for the natural world.

First the Giant Mammals and then the Dinosaurs

At first, it was the prehistoric mammals that held centre stage, fossils of animals such as the armadillo-like Glyptodonts and Giant Sloths that had been discovered in South America. Sir Richard Owen was responsible for formally classifying a number of these animals. Indeed, he named a species of giant sloth (Mylodon darwini), after Charles Darwin, a friend of his at the time, although the two men were to fall out over Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the concept of species being immutable. These prehistoric mammal fossils were more abundant in relative terms than dinosaur fossils and large numbers of such specimens were finding their way into Europe as South and Central America was explored and opened up. With the expansion of American settlers into the western half of the United States, more and more spectacular dinosaur fossils were being found and it was the dinosaurs and their remains that were to take hold of the public’s imagination.