The ‘invention’ of dinosaurs

Fourteen years younger than Mantell, Richard Owen also studied
medicine, but concentrated in particular on anatomy. He gained a
reputation as a skilled anatomist, and acquired a position at the
Royal College of Surgeons in London, which gave him access to
a great deal of comparative material and, through considerable
industry and skill, allowed him to foster a reputation as the ‘English
Cuvier’. During the late 1830s, he was able to persuade the British
Association to grant him money to prepare a detailed review of all that was then known of British fossil reptiles. This eventually
resulted in the publication of a stream of large, well-illustrated
volumes that would mimic the hugely important works (notably
the multi–volume Ossemens Fossiles) published by Cuvier
earlier in the century, and further cemented Owen’s scientific
reputation.
This project resulted in two important publications: one in 1840 on
mostly marine fossils (Conybeare’s Enaliosauria) and another in
1842 on the remainder, including Mantell’s Iguanodon. The 1842
report is a remarkable document because of Owen’s invention of
the new ‘tribe or sub-order . . . which I . . . name . . . Dinosauria’.
Owen identified three dinosaurs in this report: Iguanodon and
Hylaeosaurus, both discovered in the Weald and named by
Mantell; and Megalosaurus, the giant reptile from Oxford.
He recognized dinosaurs as members of a unique and hitherto
unrecognized group on the basis of several detailed and distinctive
anatomical observations. These included the enlarged sacrum
(a remarkably strong attachment of the hips to the spinal column),
the double-headed ribs in the chest region, and the pillar-like
construction of the legs (see Figure 10).
In reviewing each dinosaur in turn, Owen trimmed their
dimensions considerably, suggesting that they were large, but in the region of 9 to 12 metres, rather than the more dramatic lengths
suggested by Cuvier, Mantell, and Buckland on previous occasions.
Furthermore, Owen speculated a little more on the anatomy and
biology of these animals in words that have an extraordinary
resonance in the light of today’s interpretations of the biology
and way of life of dinosaurs.


Owen’s conception was therefore one of very stout, but egg-laying
and scaly (because they were still reptiles) creatures resembling the
largest mammals to be found in the tropical regions of the Earth
today; his dinosaurs were in effect the crowning glory of a time
on Earth when egg-laying and scaly-skinned reptiles reigned
supreme. Owen’s dinosaurs were the ancient world’s equivalents of
present-day elephants, rhinos, and hippos. Looked at purely from
the logic of scientific deduction, based on such meagre remains, this
was not only brilliantly incisive, but an altogether revolutionary
vision of creatures from the ancient past. Such breathtaking vision
is all the more remarkable when it is juxtaposed to the ‘gigantic
lizard’ models, though these were entirely reasonable and logical
interpretations built on established and respected Cuvierian
principles of comparative anatomy.

The creation of the Dinosauria had other important purposes at the
time. The reports also offered a sweeping refutation of the general
progressionist and transmutationist movements within the fields
of biology and geology during the first half of the 19th century.
Progressionists noted that the fossil record seemed to show that life
had become progressively more complex: the earliest rocks showed
the simplest forms of life, while more recent rocks showed evidence
of more complex creatures. Transmutationists noted that members
of one species were not identical and pondered whether this
variability might also allow species to change over time. Jean
Baptiste de Lamarck, a colleague of Cuvier in Paris, had suggested
that animal species might transmute, or change, in form over time
through the inheritance of acquired characteristics. These ideas
challenged the widely held, biblically inspired belief that God had
created all creatures on Earth, and were being widely and
acrimoniously discussed.

Dinosaurs, and indeed several of the groups of organisms
recognized in the God-fearing Owen’s reports, provided evidence
that life on Earth did not demonstrate an increase in complexity
over time – in fact quite the reverse. Dinosaurs were anatomically
reptiles (that is to say, members of the general group of egg-laying,
cold-blooded, scaly vertebrates); however, the reptiles living today
were a degenerate group of creatures when compared to Owen’s
magnificent dinosaurs that had lived during Mesozoic times. In
short, Owen was attempting to strangle the radical, scientifically
driven intellectualism of the time in order to re-establish an
understanding of the diversity of life that had its basis closer to the
views espoused by Reverend William Paley in his book entitled
Natural Theology in which God held centre-stage as the Creator
and Architect of all Nature’s creatures.
Owen’s fame grew steadily through the 1840s and 1850s, and he
became involved in the committees associated with the planning of
the relocated Great Exhibition of 1854. It is a curious fact that
Owen, for all his burgeoning fame, was not first choice as the
scientific director for the construction of the dinosaurs – Gideon
Mantell was. Mantell refused on the grounds of persistent
ill-health, and also because he was exceedingly wary of the risks
associated with popularizing scientific work, particularly the risk of
misrepresentating imperfectly developed ideas.
Mantell’s story ended in tragedy: his obsession with fossils and
the development of a personal museum led to the collapse of his
medical practice, and his family disintegrated (his wife left him and
his surviving children emigrated once they were old enough to leave
home). The diary that he kept for much of his life makes melancholy
reading; in his final years he was left lonely and racked by chronic
back pain, and he died of a self-administered overdose of
laudanum.
Although outflanked by the ambitious, brilliant, and crucially
full-time, scientist Owen, Mantell spent much of the last decade
of his life continuing research on ‘his’ Iguanodon. He produced
a series of scientific articles and extremely popular books
summarizing many of his new discoveries, and he was the first to
realize (in 1851) that Owen’s vision of the dinosaurs (or at least
Iguanodon) as stout ‘elephantine reptiles’ was probably wrong.
Further discoveries of jaws with teeth, and further analysis of the
partial skeleton (the ‘Mantel-piece’), revealed that Iguanodon had
strong back legs and smaller, weaker front limbs. As a result, he
concluded that its posture may have had much more in common
with the ‘upright’ reconstructions of giant ground sloths
(paradoxically inspired by Owen’s detailed description of the fossil
ground sloth Mylodon). Unfortunately, this work was overlooked,
largely because of the excitement and publicity surrounding Owen’s
Crystal Palace dinosaur models. The truth of Mantell’s suspicions,
and the strength of his own intellect, were not to be revealed for a
further 30 years, and through another amazing piece of serendipity.