Megalosaurus – the rise and fall of the first dinosaur super star

Megalosaurus is one of those classic dinosaur names that encompass the schoolboy ideal of how dinosaurs have long been regarded by the public; -‘saurus’ suggests reptilian and ‘mega’ pertains to both great size and awe.  The name literally means great lizard.  What is less widely known is that this was the first dinosaur to be described – nearly 200 years before Richard Owen thought up the term.  In 1676, Robert Plot, first curator of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum described a fragment of leg bone (femur) too large to have come from any living British species, concluding rather that it had belonged to a giant.  This fragment was next described in 1763 by physician and author Richard Brookes, who named it “Scrotum humanum” due to its resemblance to a petrified pair of testicles. The fossil itself has been lost but the drawing of it is sufficiently detailed that it has been identified as coming from a Megalosaurus.

More fragments were discovered in Oxfordshire during the early 19^th century and were acquired by William Buckland, professor of geology and Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford.  Buckland was an eccentric character who, when he wasn’t naming new species spent much of his time eating known ones.  He was fond of mice on toast and kept live badgers in his college rooms.  After the French comparative anatomist Georges Curvier examined the remains and concluded they were from a reptile, Buckland described them in 1924, giving them the name Megalosaurus.  Two years later, geologist Gideon Mantell, who first discovered Iguanodon, gave it the two-part scientific name Megalosaurus Bucklandii in honour of its discoverer.

 

 

With the naming of Iguanodon in 1825 and the discovery of large marine creatures in locations such as Lime Regis, the notion of an age of reptiles before mammals quickly gained scientific credence.  Yet it would several more decades until it caught the popular imagination.  The next major step occurred when Richard Owen collected the giant terrestrial reptiles under the term Dinosauria; terrible lizards.  This was followed by engravings of ferocious Megalosaurus snacking on rhinoceros-like Iguanodon, regardless of the fact that the two species were separated by some 40 million years.  Megalosaurus had arrived!

The first dino-mania hit Britain in 1853, whilst the Crystal Palace was being prepared for its opening in Sydenham.  In the months preceding the opening, great interest grew around the life-sized models of extinct animals, which were the first of their kind.  Inspired by Richard Owen’s monographs and constructed by Benjamin Waterhouse-Hawkins, the stars of Crystal Palace are the three species of dinosaur; Iguanodon, the spiny Hylaeosaurus and Megalosaurus.  Although unfinished when the Sydenham Crystal Palace opened June 1854, the models were a sensation. They were accompanied by an array of merchandise, including guidebooks written by Owen, small-scale models and engraved prints and posters. They also featured in satirical cartoons, many suggesting that these ‘monsters’ were more terrifying than educational.  Those involved in making them believed the models would be an aid to geology and palaeontology. Others agreed, with The Crystal Palace Herald reporting that the models were: ‘A great visual idea, of much importance to scientific instruction, this portion of the Great Exhibition will be second to none’.

Off the back of this success, Megalosaurus gained the accolade of being the first dinosaur mentioned in a work of fiction.  In the beginning of Bleak House, Charles Dickens, describing the muddy London streets, writes "Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."  The dinosaur has unfortunately never made it into any film or TV adaptations of the book.

In a way, the Crystal Palace Park opened at just the wrong time for Megalosaurus and its other dinosaur stars.  Up until then, dinosaur discoveries were almost entirely confined to Britain and the reconstructions were based on the highly fragmentary known remains.  During the remainder of the 19th century, new finds, many from the western United States, overturned scientific understanding of these animals.  The discovery of Hadrosaurus foulkii (one of the ‘duck-billed’ dinosaurs) in 1858 and the Bernisart Iguanodons in 1882 suggested many dinosaurs were actually bipedal, rather the four-legged behemoths Hawkins depicted.

In 1912, Megalosaurus featured in the original dinosaur adventure story, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.  It is first glimpsed by the explorers in light of a flaming torch in the depth of night.  Conan Doyles describes the sight of “a horrible mask, like a giant toad’s, of a warty, leprous skin, and of a loose mouth all beslobbered with fresh blood.”

The Megalosaurus of The Lost World is as truly terrifying as it is implausible.  Despite numerous finds of the related Allosaurus showing these animals were bipedal, it walks on either two or four legs and resembles a monster toad, even bounding across the plateau in pursuit of its prey.  Most disturbing of all, when one is killed toward the end of the book, its heart continues to beat for days after the flesh has been carved up!

The Lost World in many respects marks the highpoint of Megalosaurus’ career in popular entertainment.  When the book was adapted for the silver screen in 1925 by Willis O’Brian, the predators were changed to Allosaurus for the benefit of American audiences.  The greatest blow to Megalosaurus’ popularity, (as well as that of most other dinosaur species) came in 1905 when Henry Fairfield Osborn published his description of a new species.  It was a huge carnivore, measuring 12 metres in length and he named it Tyrannosaurus rex.

 

In the unlikely event that you require convincing of the popularity of T. rex, consider this; it is the only organism in all of earth’s history to be widely recognised by its full scientific name.  For much of the hundred and eight years since it was discovered, it has been considered the largest terrestrial predator to have ever lived.  With this kind of prestige, its popularity was guaranteed.  IMDb lists 93 titles featuring T.rex.  Whenever dinosaurs appear on screen, you can bet there’ll be a tyrannosaur amongst them.  In comparison other individual dinosaur species have failed to capture the popular imagination in quite the in the same way.

Meanwhile the poor Megalosaurus fell into cultural and to some extent, scientific obscurity.  No other fossils of it have been accurately identified.  During the 20th century remains of carnivorous dinosaurs found in a variety of places and geological times were attributed to Megalosaurus, so the species became what is known as a taxonomic waste bin; somewhere to shove stuff you’re not sure what to do with.  Research during the late 20^th century and over the last 10 years has corrected this.  The species Megalosaurus bucklandii now only refers to the fossils first described by William Buckland.  These pieces are on permanent display in Oxford’s Natural History Museum.  A fragment of skull, a section of jaw bone, some vertebra, a hip and part of a hind leg, are all we have of the first dinosaur that anyone knew about.