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The seven greatest dinosaur discoveries of the last 200 years
Since the first dinosaur was named two centuries ago, scientists have made considerable progress in revealing the fascinating and complex lives of these ancient reptiles.
On 20 February 1824, during a meeting of the Geological Society of London, palaeontologist William Buckland formally introduced Megalosaurus.
Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be described by scientists. But it would be another 18 years before Richard Owen coined the word dinosaur.
In the 200 years since the meeting, we’ve learned more about how dinosaurs evolved, what they looked like, how they behaved and what eventually became of them.
The discovery of new fossils and the development of new techniques to study them have enabled scientists to delve into the fascinating lives of these ancient reptiles like never before. Some of these discoveries have been so significant that they drastically changed how we look at dinosaurs.
This Megalosaurus jaw housed at the University of Oxford helped William Buckland to describe the first dinosaur in 1824. Image by Josh Davis.
1. The first named dinosaur
Dinosaur fossils were being unearthed long before the first species was described. As nobody knew what a dinosaur was at this point, people didn’t know what to make of them.
It wasn’t until around 1818 that William Buckland, a cleric from the University of Oxford, decided to study in greater detail a number of fossils that had been discovered around Oxfordshire.
With help from other scientists, Buckland concluded that the fossils belonged to a type of giant lizard that walked on four legs. It was eventually given the name Megalosaurus bucklandii in his honour.
Fossils of other dinosaurs were initially attributed to Megalosaurus until further discoveries revealed the greater diversity of this group of reptiles.
Palaeontologist Stephen Brusatte says, “it was in the 1820s and 1830s that people started to realise that there was this group of quite large, extinct reptilian animals”.
“People had been encountering dinosaur bones all around the world for thousands of years before. Native Americans and other Indigenous tribes across Central Asia and South America even had stories about creatures that were based on the discoveries of fossils.”
“But 200 years ago, a group of professional scientists in museums and universities realised that this group of extinct giant reptiles existed.”
Fossil teeth provided the first evidence that some giant prehistoric reptiles were plant eaters.
2. Giant prehistoric herbivorous reptiles
A year after Megalosaurus was named, a second giant prehistoric reptile, called Iguanodon, was described. It was a hugely significant discovery in its own right.
Iguanodon was the first giant prehistoric reptile found to be herbivorous. At the time, most reptiles were thought to eat mainly meat or insects. So, to find a reptile on this scale that only ate plants was viewed as revolutionary.
The first-known evidence of Iguanodon was a collection of teeth found at the side of a road by Mary Ann Mantell and her husband, Dr Gideon Algernon Mantell. The fossilised teeth resembled scaled-up versions of living iguana teeth. This is how Iguanodon, which means iguana tooth, got its name.
This Archeopteryx specimen from the Natural History Museum shows the feather impressions that led to it being named the first bird.
3. The missing link
Archaeopteryx is one of the world’s most famous fossils. It’s widely regarded as the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, displaying a perfect blend of avian and reptilian features. However, this link wasn’t fully appreciated at the time of its discovery.
The first Archaeopteryx skeleton was uncovered in Germany in 1861. This extraordinary find had clear impressions of feathers around its skeleton. Birds weren’t known from this long ago, so it was described as one of the first birds.
Just two years earlier, Charles Darwin had published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species. Thomas Huxley, who was a great disciple of Darwin, was one of the first people to realise the significance of Archaeopteryx. Huxley noticed there were similarities between Archaeopteryx and some meat-eating dinosaur skeletons.
Additional well-preserved specimens eventually followed, which showed that although Archaeopteryx had feathers like a bird, it also had teeth, clawed fingers and a long string of bones for a tail. In other words, features that aren’t present in living birds.
More than a century after the discovery of Archaeopteryx, the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs became widely accepted.
Othniel Charles Marsh (centre, back row) and his fossil-collecting assistants competed with other palaeontologists to find dinosaurs during the Bone Wars. Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).
4. The Bone Wars
Although not technically a single discovery, but many, the Bone Wars stands out as being one of the most significant and intense periods of fossil hunting in the history of palaeontology.
By the 1870s, interest in dinosaurs was growing rapidly. A fierce rivalry emerged during the late 1800s between two palaeontologists, Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. Both men fought relentlessly to find and name the most dinosaurs.
As time went on, the feud became even more bitter and the pair used tactics such as spying, theft and even the destruction of fossils to get ahead. The rivalry eventually soured their professional and scientific reputations, but not before they had well and truly left their mark in the history books.
What came out of this period was a significant increase in the knowledge of North American dinosaurs, including the discovery of many near-complete specimens. In total, the two men described 136 species of dinosaurs, including some famous names such as Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Allosaurus, Diplodocus and Brontosaurus.
Our dinosaur researcher, Professor Paul Barrett, says, “the discoveries in the American West gave us, in many cases, the first examples of substantially complete dinosaur skeletons. We had been finding bits of dinosaur skeletons in Europe for 50 years before that, but really only a couple of substantial finds and most of those were still fairly incomplete.”
“During the Bone Wars, a lot of material was being brought back that was able to give us a more complete view of what a lot of these animals looked like. This has a knock-on effect for understanding more about their biology and how they are related to each other. So, these discoveries were a big leap forward in understanding dinosaurs at that time.”
Well-preserved Maiasaura nests, like the one recreated in this model, show how dinosaurs fed and cared for their young.
5. Dinosaurs as parents
In 1923, scientists from the American Museum of Natural History unearthed the first fossils to be widely regarded as dinosaur eggs. Found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, the eggs were initially thought to belong to Protoceratops, whose remains were frequently found in the area. It wasn’t until the 1990s, when they were compared to other fossils, that scientists realised they more likely belonged to Oviraptor-like animals.
The discovery of eggs was the first significant insight into how dinosaurs grew and reproduced. It also opened the door to learning more about their social behaviour.
The next major discovery came in the 1980s, when palaeontologists uncovered nests belonging to the duck-billed dinosaur Maiasaura in Montana, USA. Alongside the nests were fossils of eggs, hatchlings and adult dinosaurs.
These exceptionally well-preserved fossils were the first strong evidence of how dinosaurs fed and cared for their offspring and kickstarted a discussion about the complex social lives of dinosaurs.
As many as 14 nests were found in a single area of the site, known as Egg Mountain. So, some scientists believe that Maiasaura may have nested in colonies.
The agile Deinonychus helped to change the prevailing view that dinosaurs were large, lumbering lizards.
6. Birds as living dinosaurs
After the initial wave of dinosaur mania during the nineteenth century, interest began to die down throughout the early 1900s. But interest grew again in the 1960s when the link between dinosaurs and birds began to gather momentum.
This new dinosaur renaissance was sparked by the discovery in 1964 of Deinonychus antirrhopus by palaeontologist John Ostrom. He noticed the fossils were bird-like in appearance, particularly their hands and hips. Ostrom suggested that birds may have evolved from dinosaurs. This was a highly controversial view at the time and opened up the debate about the true ancestor of birds.
Until this point, dinosaurs had been viewed as large, lumbering lizards. Deinonychus fossils turned this image on its head as they showed a small, two-legged, fast-moving predator. It was clearly a very dynamic dinosaur, so it also opened up the debate about whether or not dinosaurs were warm-blooded.
A fossil of Sinosauropteryx discovered in China in the 1990s provided the first clear evidence that some non-avian dinosaurs had feathers. © ND700/ Shutterstock
7. Feathered dinosaurs
The most significant discovery in recent times was made in China in the 1990s. A fossil of the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx revealed impressions of feather-like structures.
This was the first clear evidence of a non-avian dinosaur with a feather-like covering. It was also significant because debate about a link between birds and dinosaurs was ongoing. By the late 1980s, it was becoming more accepted that birds were likely descended from dinosaurs. The discovery of feathers was the final catalyst to get the theory over the line.
“Because birds are so unique among living animals, particularly in comparison with their nearest living relatives, which are crocodiles, a lot of the things we see in birds appear to be unique to this group,” says Paul.
