Richard Owen: two bibliographical citations

[Stephan Pickering <stefanpickering2002@yahoo.com>]

   For those who, like me, are interested in the
history of taxonomic nomenclature vis-a-vis dinosaurs,
two papers have been given to me by Pauline Carpenter
Dear,  clarifying  a footnote and bibliographic entry
in Rupka's biography of Owen.
Pauline Carpenter Dear, 1984. Richard Owen and the
invention of the dinosaur, Henry & Ida Schuman Prize
Paper, 57pp
Pauline Carpenter Dear, 1986. Richard Owen invents the
dinosaurs: Cuverian paleontological practice in
Britain, 38pp [Revision of 1984 paper for oral
presentation]
   As Pauline points out (1984:33) Richard Owen's
Dinosauria was predicated upon "the introduction of
vertebrae as a fundamental criterion in reptilian
taxonomy", as well as his disdain for the ambitious
Gideon Mantell (and not, contra Adrian Desmond, some
permeating fear of Robert Grant), by iterating his
ideas of Archetype (as well as osteological
nomenclature). Owen saw his invented "dinosaurs" as
having columnar legs, an enlarged scrum to balance and
distribute weight for animals 30-40 feet long, and a
mammalian-like masticatory apparatus and cheeks (ideas
first advanced by Gideon Mantell). The history of
Owen's attacks against Mantell have been documented
elsewhere. And, the detective work, as it were, of
Hugh Torrens proved that the name "Dinosauria" was
established in 1842 as his "Report" was being prepared
for the printer and was not used in 1841 (a
nomenclatural fact not known to Pauline, although not
lessening the importance and cogency of her paper).
Owen's anti-Mantell vituperations (cf. Owen
1842:69-70, 84-85, 91-92, 94-102) ensured that his own
name "dinosaurs" would become a part of the "public"
discussion: when people thought of "dinosaur", they
would equate them  with Owen's Crystal Palace
monstrosities and not Mantell's "age of reptiles".
   As I am elucidating elsewhere in a
chapter-in-progress for my Alfred Russel Wallace's
KING KONG, Huxley appreciated by Cuvier/Owen skill of
explicating dinosaur morphology (at least with the
limited material they had), but criticized their weak
understanding of function (Walter Bock's form-function
complex is the grandchild, so to speak, of these
comparative anatomists) -- although form/function was
pivotal to Cuvier/Owen, and Huxley's own egocentric
aspirations often thwarted his recognition that
Cuvier/Owen were not as stupid as he presumed. (Owen
was cunning: his falsification of pterosaur morphology
-- influencing so many later, but not Seeley --  was
finally illuminated in Kevin Padian's dissertation.)
Cuvier's 1812 Recherches, with its recognition of
"laws that determine the relationships of organs", a
"mutual dependence of functions", and Buckland's
Geology & Mineralogy, were, in their time, illustrated
thesaurus of comparative anatomical identifications
(much like the plates of Marsh's dinosaurs, or the
Gilmore/Madsen monographs) of individual bones.
Buckland, more than Owen, embraced actualism (as I do)
as a methodology of explicating ecomorphologies of
dinosaurs, making no epistemological distinction
between "then" and "now".
   Pauline Carpenter Dear's paper(s) remains an
excellent overview and critique of Adrian Desmond's
approach to Owen's Dinosauria.

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