Meet the Man Who Invented Dinosaurs & Nearly Had His Own Museum in Central Park – Dusty Old Thing
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Sir Richard Owen at one point taught natural history to Queen Victoria’s children, he was respected in his field, though he did argue with a number of his fellow scientists, including Charles Darwin. Owen formed the theory of what dinosaurs were after reading the work of other esteemed scientists like, Gideon Mantell. Owen named this new genre of animal dinosauria, meaning “terrible lizards” in Greek. He first published his findings in a paper in 1842 that set the scientific community on its head. The sensationalist tone of his classifications would soon be followed by even more sensational public displays.
Owen sought to give life to the fossils that had been found and enlisted the help of scientific artists to help the world visualize what they might have looked like. Overnight the Victorians went from a young world to one in which monsters had roamed the earth sometime long before humanity had recorded history. Owen did not believe in evolution though he was incredibly dedicated to natural history.