What Did People Think When They First Dug Up Dinosaur Fossils?

In 1822,Mary Ann Mantellwas accompanying her husband , obstetrician and paleontologist Gideon Mantell , on a sojourn to a affected role , when she noticed something glistening at the side of the road . Looking nigher , she happen great teethembedded into the rock .

Her husband Gideon , in a major discovery , realise that the fogy belong to a wight obscure to skill , which he would later describe and nameIguanadonafter their Iguana iguana - like tooth . afterward , palaeontologist Richard Owen essay a number of fossil set and concluded thatIguanodon , Megalosaurus , andHylaeosaurusfossils were from " a trenchant kin or sub - order of Saurian Reptiles " which he termed , rather catchily , " dinosauria " .

So that ’s ( rough ) how dinosaur became recognize for what they were . But these finds were far from humankind ’s first encounter with dinosaur fossils , which after all had been strewn around the Earth for hundreds of million of class before any humans even rile to show up .

dodo have likely been come across throughout human account , despite not being distinguish for what they are until relatively latterly . In fact , aMegalosaurusfossil was ascertain in the mid-1600s , which at first was consider to be like a human thighbone , before being described by naturalist Robert Plot in 1677 as the bone of an elephant , brought over to England by the Romans . An illustration of the fossil caught the attention of English medico Richard Brookes , who in 1763 distinguish the fossilscrotum humanum , looking at a fossil of an entirely raw species of elephantine goliath from millions of years ago and remarking at how itlooks a piece like human testicles .

Before we realized what dinosaur were , breakthrough of their bones were often attributed to giant versions of recognize animals , or gargantuan humanity . Long before that , it ’s been suggested that dinosaur ivory inspired the stories of gryphon , giant star , and dragons .

Ancient Greek legends of gryphon nesting near gold mine in the Gobi Desert , accord to classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor , could be an attempt by people to explain fossils they had found there . section of the Gobi Desert were once home to a large turn of fogy , withProtoceratopslooking similar enough in appearance to the mythic beast . fossil of dinosaurs , seen by a Chinese historiographer in the fourth century BCE , werelabeled as firedrake bones , while " dragon bones " were prescribed for ailments frommadness to diarrhea .

We may not have only been unearthing dinosaur bones for as long as we ’ve been around , we may have been using them as an attempt to bring around the run .