Dinosaurs: facts and fiction

Dinosaurs were ‘borne’ officially in 1842 as a result of some truly
brilliant and intuitive detective work by the British anatomist
Richard Owen (Figure 1), whose work had concentrated upon
the unique nature of some extinct British fossil reptiles.
At the time of Owen’s review, he was working on a surprisingly
meagre collection of fossil bones and teeth that had been discovered
up to that time and were scattered around the British Isles.
Although the birth of dinosaurs was relatively inauspicious
(first appearing as an afterthought in the published report of the
11th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science), they were soon to become the centre of worldwide
attention. The reason for this was simple. Owen worked in London,
at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, at a time when the
British Empire was probably at its greatest extent. To celebrate such
influence and achievement, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was
devised. To house this event a huge temporary exhibition hall
(Joseph Paxton’s steel and glass ‘Crystal Palace’) was built on Hyde
Park in central London.

Rather than destroy the wonderful exhibition hall at the end of 1851
it was moved to a permanent site at the London suburb ofSydenham (the future Crystal Palace Park). The parkland
surrounding the exhibition building was landscaped and arranged
thematically, and one of the themes depicted scientific endeavour
in the form of natural history and geology and how they had
contributed to unravelling the Earth’s history. This geological
theme park, probably one of the earliest of its kind, included
reconstructions of genuine geological features (caves, limestone
pavements, geological strata) as well as representations of the

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Dinosaurs
inhabitants of the ancient world. Owen, in collaboration with
the sculptor and entrepreneur Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins,
populated the parkland with gigantic iron-framed and
concrete-clad models of dinosaurs (Figure 2) and other prehistoric
creatures known at this time. The advance publicity generated
before the relocated ‘Great Exhibition’ was re-opened in June
1854 included a celebratory dinner held on New Year’s Eve 1853
within the belly of a half-completed model of the dinosaur
Iguanodon and this ensured considerable public awareness of
Owen’s dinosaurs.
The fact that dinosaurs were extinct denizens of hitherto
unsuspected earlier worlds, and were the literal embodiment of
the dragons of myth and legend, probably guaranteed their
adoption by society at large; they even appeared in the works of
Charles Dickens, who was a personal acquaintance of Richard
Owen. From such evocative beginnings public interest in dinosaurs
has been nurtured and maintained ever since. Quite why the appeal
should have been so persistent has been much speculated upon;
it may have much to do with the importance of story-telling as a
means of stimulating human imaginative and creative abilities. It
strikes me as no coincidence that in humans the most formative
years of intellectual growth and cultural development, between the
ages of about 3 and 10 years, are often those when the enthusiasm
for dinosaurs is greatest – as many parents can testify. The buzz of
excitement created when children glimpse their first dinosaur
skeleton is almost palpable. Dinosaurs, as the late Stephen Jay
Gould – arguably our greatest popularizer of scientific natural
history – memorably remarked, are popular because they are ‘big,
scary and [fortunately for us] dead’, and it is true that their gaunt
skeletons exert a gravitational pull on the imaginative landscape of
youngsters.