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History of Dinosaur Bone Studies
Currently, scientists take part in the search for dinosaur bones, the piecing together of skeletons, protecting dinosaurs bones yet to be discovered, the analysis of bones, classification of dinosaur species and generating theories about how dinosaurs may have carried out daily life. Although it is now widely accepted that these bones represent ancient animals known as dinosaurs, in the past it was not clear as to what they came from. Over 2,000 years ago, the Chinese in Sichuan believed that the giant bones came from dragons and Europeans thought these bones were from huge giants that had been killed around the time of the Great Flood. The Greeks and the Romans also found dinosaur fossils and these bones fueled the ogre and griffin stories passed down through history. In 1776, an enormous femur bone was found by Reverend Plot in England. The English at this time also though that the bone was from a giant but now they suspected that this giant might be an ancient animal now known as a dinosaur. Although dinosaur bones have been found for thousands of years, it was not until 1822 that the first dinosaur species was discovered and named. These bones were discovered by Gideon Mantell, an English geologist and named “Iguanodon” due to the common features the dinosaur shared with iguanas of today. The Iguanodon was a duck-billed plant eater and was probably discovered mainly by his wife, Mary Mantell of Sussex, England. Hylaeosaurus, a huge plant eater with armor was also named by this husband-wife team in 1833 among other dinosaurs. Later, the Iguanodon was scientifically named Megalosaurus bucklandii by William Buckland near Oxford.In 1842 Richard Owen, another paleontologist, decided that all of these giant bones would be referred to as “dinosaurs” or “Dinosauria”. Owen established the Natural History Museum in London after determining that there was something in common between all of the known dinosaur bones at that time. Sir Richard Owen actually toiled away to present dinosaurs as a separate taxonomic group because he wanted to strengthen his arguments against Darwin’s theory of evolution. The theory of evolution hadn’t been published yet, most importantly the part about natural selection- and ironically all of Owen’s work actually ended up helping to support Darwin’s work. Dr. Caspar Wistar found the first dinosaur fossil (a femur) in Gloucester County, New Jersey, United States in 1787- but this femur was lost and since then more fossils have been found in the same place. The first nearly complete dinosaur discovered in America was found in marl pits around 1858. Hadrosaurus foulkii (meaning “Foulke’s big lizard) came out of Haddonfield, New Jersey and was named by Joseph Leidy after its finder, William Parker Foulke. This was also actually the first nearly perfect dinosaur skeleton found and bipedal to boot. The two-legged creature was a shock to scientists at that time who had always said that dinosaurs only walked on four legs. Leidy analyzed the skeleton, and because he was a skilled Anatomist he was able to come up with some good theories as to what the dinosaur was like. An inspiration to many, these dinosaur bones were beautiful and important to paleontologists. The discovery of the bipedal creature led two men (Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh) into a furious competition to find the most dinosaurs referred to as “The Bone Wars”. Cope ended up spending every last dime on this hunt and died in 1897. Marsh ended up winning grants from the US Geological Survey to find more dinosaur bones.
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