First Dinosaur Fossil
Year of Discovery: 1824
What Is It? The first proof that giant dinosaurs once walked the earth.
Who Discovered It? Gideon Mantell and William Buckland
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
Most people (and scientists) assumed that the world and its mix of plants and animals
had always been as it was when these scientists lived. The discovery of dinosaur fossils destroyed that belief. This discovery represented the first proof that entire groups of ancient—
and now extinct—animals once roamed Earth. It was the first proof that massive beasts (dinosaurs) much larger than anything that exists today once existed.
This discovery was a great leap forward for the fields of archeology and paleontology
—both in their knowledge as well as in their field techniques. Dinosaurs have proved to be
the most dramatic of all relics from the past and have done more to acquaint the ordinary
person with the fact of biological evolution than anything else.
How Was It Discovered?
People had always found fossil bones, but none had correctly identified them as extinct
species. In 1677 Englishman Robert Plot found what 220 years later was identified as the
end of the thighbone of a giant biped carnivorous dinosaur. Plot gained great fame when he
claimed it was the fossilized testicles of a giant and said it proved that story giants were real.
Science was clearly still in the dark ages until two Englishmen, working independently, both wrote articles on their discovery of dinosaurs in 1824. They share the credit for
discovering dinosaurs.
In 1809 (50 years before Darwin’s discovery of evolution) English country doctor
Gideon Mantell lived in Lewes in the Sussex district of England. While visiting a patient
one day, Mantell’s wife, Mary Ann, took a short stroll and then presented him with several
puzzling teeth she had found. These massive teeth were obviously from an herbivore but
were far too large for any known animal. Mantell, an amateur geologist, had been collecting
fossil relics of ancient land animals for several years but could not identify these teeth. He
returned to the site and correctly identified the rock strata as from the Mesozoic era. Thus,
the teeth had to be many millions of years old.
These teeth were not the first large bones Mantell had found, but they were the most
puzzling. Mantell took them to famed French naturalist, Charles Cuvier, who thought they
came from an ordinary rhinoceros-like animal. Mantell set the teeth aside.
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