It was a part of the femur of a megalosaurus – Megalosaurus bucklandii –, in 1676, in England. At the time, they thought it belonged to an elephant, which is how the item was recorded in the book. The Natural History of Oxfordshire by the English reverend Robert Plot, responsible for the find. Others still believed that it was part of the body of a giant.
Years later, in 1815, a jaw full of teeth was found in the same region of the femur and, in 1824, the British paleontologist Willian Buckland associated the two fossils with the same animal.
The taxonomic classification Dinosauria and the popular term “dinosaur” only appeared in 1842 and, right away, were applied to three species: the pioneer megalosaurus, the iguanodon and the hylaeosaurus.
The “great lizard” – the literal meaning of the name megalosaurus – was bipedal, carnivorous, 8 to 9 m long and had very powerful jaws. He lived in the Jurassic Period and has served as inspiration for pop culture characters, such as Dino da Silva Sauro, patriarch of the Dinosaur Family.
It is worth noting that many dinosaur fossils (and other remains of prehistoric living beings) were found before that by people from different parts of the world. The problem is that they were never identified as such.
For example: the aborigines Goolarabooloofrom the west coast of Australia, still preserve footprints of long-necked dinosaurs that they consider to be the footprints of a deity. One attributed specific footprints, with only three fingers, to the man-emu Marala, a law-giver deity.
Fossils of distant relatives of the Cycads, plants with palm-like leaves, were also treated with reverence for their resemblance to the description of the feathers of the mythical lawgiver-bird.
Source: Max Lager, professor of paleontology at USP; book The Natural History of Oxford-Shireby Robert Plot.
Share this article via: