Page 23 - Dinosaur (DK Eyewitness Books)

WHAT’S IN A NAME? LIFESIZE SCULPTURES
Richard Owen (1804–1892) rides the The earliest lifesize models of dinosaurs resembled scaly,
skeleton of a prehistoric giant ground reptilian rhinoceroses. Installed in 1853, they still stand in
sloth in this cartoon. This anatomist Sydenham Park, London. Advised by Richard Owen, sculptor
(expert in anatomy) suggested the Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins created concrete models
term “dinosaur” at a time when only of Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus and set
three kinds had been discovered. them up on islands in an artificial lake on public view.
Owen realized that they formed a Owen led a group of scientists who celebrated the
special group because, unlike ordinary construction by enjoying a lavish banquet inside
reptiles, they stood on erect limbs the hollow body of an Iguanodon model.
and their backbones above the hips
were fused together. He published
descriptions of many other kinds
of prehistoric animal and founded Concrete
London’s Natural History Museum. Iguanodon models

WILD WILD WEST
Bones of the mini-sauropod
Long Anchisaurus had apparently been
front tooth unearthed in Connecticut as early
as 1818. But the spotlight on dinosaur
discoveries really shifted from Europe to
the American Wild West in the 1870s,
when paleontologists began finding
fossils of large animals in quarries.
The famous American dinosaur hunter
Barnum Brown (1873–1963) discovered
many fossils in the US. This photograph
shows his wife and him examining huge
bones found at a quarry in Wyoming
in 1941. Brown’s earlier finds included
the first Tyrannosaurus skeleton,
dug up in Montana in 1902.

FACT OR FICTION?
The earliest dinosaur discoveries may
date back more than 2,600 years.
People in central Asia spoke of a
creature with a hooked beak and
talon-tipped limbs. This mythical
monster may have been inspired by a
beaked dinosaur called Protoceratops,
whose fossils have been found in central
Asia in recent times. The stories seem to
have reached Persia (modern Iran) to the
south, where people carved images of the
beast. Trade contacts between Persia and
Greece may have carried over tales of the
legendary creature, giving rise to the
Greek legend of the gryps, or griffin.
Persian statue of a griffin

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