1877 and 1879. His catalogue is rarely mentioned in present-day books, but it is a remarkable document. It extends over 224 pages and lists well over 1,000 different fossil species that had been formally described.1
After the Great Exhibition in London of 1851 Sir Richard Owen was asked by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to advise on the first life-size reconstructions of dinosaurs for the Crystal Palace. The workshop was engraved by Philip Henry Delamotte in 1853.
This may well surprise you; it was only three years after Richard Owen published the notion of a dinosaur, yet already there were hundreds of people pursuing palæontology professionally and there were more than 1,000 known species of fossilized life. Already the burgeoning science of palæontology was becoming well established. The public were increasingly interested in the reality of fossils, and the growth of the railway network in Britain meant that visiting the seashore, and collecting specimens as a hobby, was suddenly available to far more people. During the 1830s, steam railways were inaugurated in England, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Australia, Cuba, Canada and the U.S.; and by the end of the 1840s seaside holidays had become popular in England. People combed the beaches for shells and the rocky strata for fossils. Many families acquired their own collections and the lure of fossils steadily increased. There was suddenly the perfect opportunity to publicize the latest research into dinosaurs. The Great Exhibition in London of 1851 had caused an upsurge in popular interest for everything scientific, and Owen was asked by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to help design the first life-size models of dinosaurs for public display in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. Hawkins had already mentioned the idea to Mantell, but he had turned it down. With Owen as the chief adviser, teams of artisans set to work, creating the first sculptures of dinosaurs that the world had ever seen. On New Year’s Eve 1853, Owen planned a dinner party for 11 prominent academics inside a hollow concrete Iguanodon, even though the model was misconstrued. Mantell had realized in 1849 that an Iguanodon was not the elephantine monster that Owen was constructing, but was more graceful, with slender forelimbs. However, by now it was too late to change the design. A 30-foot (9-metre) representation of the Iguanodon was one of the first of these concrete dinosaurs to be built. To generate publicity, the dinner party had been arranged in the open cast of the partly completed sculpture, with Owen sitting at the head of the table opposite Francis Fuller, the managing director of the Crystal Palace, and with nine more seats squeezed into the space. Once the party was over, the top section was added to the sculpture and the world’s first life-size dinosaur model was complete. It is one of the original sculptures that can be seen to this day at the Crystal Palace Park, in the London borough of Bromley. These dinosaur models are different to our present-day interpretation, though they are vivid examples of how dinosaurs were first interpreted in Victorian England. Apart from true dinosaurs, the 15 sculptures include plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, together with a few prehistoric mammals. They survived in a neglected state until 1973, when they were classified as Grade II listed buildings. In 2002 they were meticulously repaired, and were upgraded to Grade I in 2007. Now that they have been properly restored, they should last forever, or at least as long as London.
A unique dinner party took place at 5:00 pm on December 31, 1853, with 11 luminaries seated inside the partly completed Iguanodon. Waterhouse Hawkins sent out the invitations, and Sir Richard Owen was seated at the head of the table.
The quarries of southern England continued to reveal strange new forms of prehistoric life, and often the excavations began with digging into the base of a cliff comprising the desired minerals. One such quarry had been dug out of the cliffs during the 1850s at Black Ven to the east of Lyme Regis. The owner was James Harrison who lived in Charmouth, and who excavated the area for high-quality Charmouth mudstone that dates from the late Sinemurian stage, about 191 million years ago, and was destined for burning into cement. Once in a while, the workmen would retrieve a bone, and these fossils were kept safely as interesting curiosities. Harrison often took them home and displayed them on the mantelpiece or in the hallway for the interest of guests. A surgeon and amateur geologist, Henry Norris, visited Dorset on vacation and became friendly with Harrison. Norris pointed out that these fossils could be important, and even valuable. So, in 1858 the two men sent a parcel containing some broken bones to Owen at the British Museum (Natural History) in London and asked for his opinion. The most conspicuous was a left femur that Owen realized was different from anything previously recorded. He formally described it in 1859, naming the genus Scelidosaurus. Owen’s intention was to name it from the same Greek word from which the word ‘skeleton’ is derived, σκέλος (skelos, hindlimb), because of the strong femur he had examined, but he confused it instead with σκελίς (skelis, rib of beef). He made a mistake: the new dinosaur should have been named Scelodosaurus.
James Harrison, a Dorset quarry manager, discovered this skull of Scelidosaurus harrisonii after it was excavated in mudstone destined for the cement furnace. It was purchased by Henry Norris and published by the Palæontological Society in 1861.
Harrison later retrieved a portion of the tibia and fibula of this creature, then a claw, and finally a skull, which Owen formally described in 1861, naming this species Scelidosaurus harrisonii in honour of its discoverer. When the rest of the dinosaur had been excavated, it revealed a surprisingly complete skeleton. Although the tip of the animal’s snout was missing, the skull and jaws were intact, and the pelvis, ribs, hindlimbs and most of the vertebræ were retrieved. Of the forelimbs (and the end of the tail) there was no sign, but otherwise it was an incredible find. The body of Scelidosaurus measured about 13 feet (4 metres) long and was covered with a protective shield of bony scales or scutes, hundreds of which had survived, with many still in roughly the original position. This was the most complete dinosaur skeleton ever found, yet Owen carried out hardly any further investigation. This dinosaur was later described by the prominent American palæontologist Othniel Marsh, who erroneously assumed it had long legs, but not until the 1960s was it further investigated. Acid treatment was used to help release the scutes from their stony matrix, but the entire fossil has yet to be completely recovered. After nearly 160 years, this fascinating fossil is still waiting to be fully described.
These are stories with endless fascination, and they have attracted the attention of innumerable authors and even some movie producers. In 2002 the story of the pioneering British work on dinosaurs became the subject of a television movie produced by National Geographic, The Dinosaur Hunters. Henry Ian Cusick played Gideon Mantell and Rachel Shelley played his wife Mary. Alan Cox was Richard Owen, Michelle Bunyan his wife Caroline; Mary Anning was portrayed by Rebecca McClay and William Buckland by Michael Pennington. The movie was well received and remains available online.2
Beachcombers were now so abundant in England that they were sometimes teased for their eagerness. A cartoon for Punch magazine in 1858 showed a beach scene dotted with bizarre objects that look like barnacles; closer inspection shows they were day-trippers in petticoats, all bending over to search for fossils and seashells. That same year, William Dyce, a leading landscape painter, created his detailed picture Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th, 1858, which showed an autumnal beach scene with his family gathering specimens from the beach. Dyce was a student of geology and astronomy, and had painted the same bay before. This painting includes finely detailed studies of the chalky cliffs, while, high in the heavens, he captures the faint image of Donati’s comet to commemorate the widespread public interest in such phenomena. By this time, people were buying microscopes and telescopes as never before, and the popular understanding of science was burgeoning.
Searching for wildlife and fossils on the beach became such a popular pastime in Victorian England that cartoonist John Leech published this portrayal of beachcombers in Punch magazine in 1858. Their hooped skirts were reminiscent of giant barnacles.
While