Re: Dino Firsts

[Stephen Dedman <dedmans@perth.dialix.com.au>]

> 
> Ignoring, for the moment, that the Chinese were digging up and eating
> dinosaur bones for centuries (thinking that they were dragon bones),
> when was the first dinosaur bone per se "discovered" and "identified" as
> such?

Coincidentally, I've been writing a book about dinosaur paleontologists for 
10-12 year-olds, so I'm knee-deep in this stuff.
1677 - Megalosaurus thighbone found in England but misidentified as 
petrified human scrotum.
1815 or thereabouts - William Buckland obtains a fragment of Megalosaurus 
jaw from a quarry; described in 1824.
1822 - Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary Ann discover Iguanodon fossils, 
described in 1825.


> And....
> 
> When was the first "complete" mounted skeleton put on display. AMNH put
> the first sauropod dinosaur on display in 1903, but was there an earlier
> non-sauropod displayed? The Crystal Palace exhibit was not actual
> mountings, but rather sculptures, or am I mistaken?

The Crystal Palace exhibit contained sculptures of enormous lizard-like 
'Iguanodon' (with its thumb-spike on its nose) and 'Megalosaurus', done 
by Waterhouse Hawkins. In 1853, a number of naturalists, including 
Buckland and Richard Owen, held a dinner-party inside the half-finished 
Iguanodon.
        The first "complete" mounted dinosaur skeleton was the Hadrosaurus 
mounted by Joseph Leidy in 1868 in Philadelphia.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> E. Summer
> 
> 
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