Megalosaurus： Dinosaur of the Day

And now for our dinosaur of the day, Megalosaurus. Megalosaurus means great lizard. It comes from the late Middle Jurassic of Oxfordshire, England, though fossils from other areas have also been called Megalosaurus. And Megalosaurus bones were first found in 1676, although at the time they had no idea they were looking at a dinosaur bone. It was the lower part of a femur, and it was described by Robert Plott, a chemistry professor at the University of Oxford and the first curator of the Ashmolean Museum. And it was described as the thigh bone of a Roman war elephant. But later, he thought that it came from a giant human, such as one that was mentioned in the Bible. The bone is lost, but his illustration was so detailed that it has now been identified as Megalosaurus. The first time I read this, I was just so shocked that a dinosaur bone was actually discovered and described in detail back in 1676, because I always think of the first dinosaur discoveries coming in the mid-1800s, basically. So it's pretty impressive that way back then they were already starting to discover these things. Yeah. So Plott's description and illustration is the first illustration of a dinosaur that's been published. And as you can imagine, Megalosaurus has an interesting history when it comes to discovery and naming. Its first scientific name, technically, was from the 1700s by Richard Brooks, who looked at this piece of bone and called it Scrotum humanum, because he thought it looked like a scrotum. This is not a valid name anymore. It was validly named, and it was the first non-avian dinosaur to be validly named in 1824. And then it had a type species name, Megalosaurus bucklandii, named in 1827. So again, lots of history here. In 1815, John Kidd reported on a find of bones in the Stonesfield Quarry, where the Megalosaurus femur was found, and he reported a giant tetrapods, which William Buckland, a professor of geology at the University of Oxford and dean of Christchurch, acquired. And Buckland was an interesting guy. He apparently had a pet bear that he liked to dress in academic robes, and he... What? That's all I could find on it. I wish there were more details. That is insane. He had a table made with dinosaur droppings that people admired without realizing what they were, and he liked to eat whatever he could try, including panthers, crocodiles, and toasted mice. And he said that mole and blue bottle fly were the worst tasting animals. He was an interesting guy. In 1818, French comparative anatomist Georges Ouvier visited Buckland and said that these bones came from a giant lizard-like creature. So Buckland and his friend William Coneybear studied the fossils, and Coneybear said they were from a quote, huge lizard. This is in 1821. In 1822, James Parkinson, a physician, announced the name Megalosaurus and illustrated one of the teeth, and he said that Megalosaurus was 40 feet long and 8 feet tall. Buckland kept studying Megalosaurus in 1823, and his wife Mary Morland drew the bones, which became the basis for his illustrating lithographies. And Buckland formally announced Megalosaurus in 1824. So James Parkinson just kind of announced it, but I guess to formally announce it, you need to describe it in a paper. So Buckland formally described the dinosaur in his paper, Notice on the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield, which was published in 1824 in the Geological Society of London. However, he did not provide a specific name, a species name, and this was common in the early 19th century. The genus was considered to be more important than the species name. Yeah, and actually we do that all the time, just in common speech about dinosaurs. We'll talk about Apatosaurus, but we don't even mention the species name. At the time, there were Orthodox Christians who had a problem with the existence of Megalosaurus. They said that suffering and death only came from original sin, and that it didn't make sense that they had this carnivorous creature that lived before humans. And some people said, well, Megalosaurus was probably originally a peaceful vegetarian, and that's how that happened. But Buckland said that, no, actually, Megalosaurus helped end animal suffering by preying on only old and sick animals, which is kind of interesting to think about, one, that this is a debate, and also the ways to explain it while also placating different people. In 1826, Ferdinand von Rittingengav named the species Megalosaurus coniveri, but not many people used that name. Actually, in 1827, Gideon Mantell named it Megalosaurus bucklandi, and that's the name that people use today. Buckland thought that Megalosaurus was quadrupedal and an amphibian that looked like a giant lizard, though he did understand, based on the thigh bone, that it would have been more upright and sprawled. The idea that Megalosaurus and carnivorous dinosaurs in general were quadrupedal was challenged in 1859 with Consignathus, and then again in 1870 with Eustreptospondylus. And so after, John Phillips made the first display of a theropod skeleton in Oxford, arranging Megalosaurus bones as bipeel. Megalosaurus is an important discovery. It is one of three genera that Richard Owen used in 1842 to name the group Dinosauria. The other two dinosaurs that inspired Dinosauria were Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus. Richard Owen directed a model made for the Crystal Palace in England, and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to build Megalosaurus in 1852 for the Crystal Palace Park. This Megalosaurus had a hump on the shoulders, and even though now we know it's not correct, this model helped the public in England be aware that ancient reptiles lived. For a long time after being discovered, Megalosaurus was seen as the typical large carnivorous dinosaur, and it became a wastebasket taxon. I know we've talked a lot about that on this show. There were a lot of dinosaurs assigned to the genus, but that changed in the 20th century when scientists started restricting Megalosaurus to fossils found in England from the Jurassic period. But before this, any fossils that were found that they didn't have enough material to name a new genus, and this usually means that they found just a single tooth, was classified as Megalosaurus. And at one point, Megalosaurus, the genus, had the most species of any non-avian dinosaur. Though a lot of them have been reclassified. I believe there's been more than 50 species that were at one time classified under Megalosaurus. Examples of the wastebasket taxon being used that are all based on just a single tooth include Megalosaurus insignis and Megalosaurus mariani. Dinosaurs that were originally Megalosaurus included Durivenator, Magnosaurus, Dilophosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus. There are a lot of other examples, but too many for us to name. Interestingly, Megalosaurus also has a lot of synonyms, and this is mostly because of the way it has been spelled in papers. In 1913, one author added a U and made the synonym Megaloosaurus. In 1926, another paper misspelled Megalosaurus four times, creating four new synonyms, so it's Megalosaurus, Megalosaurus, Megalosaurus, and Megalosaurus. And this happened again in 1964 when a G accidentally was replaced with a Q to make Mecalosaurus. Yeah, it's kind of funny because a lot of these dinosaur names like Carcharodontosaurus or Deinokyrus and stuff seem a lot harder to spell than Megalosaurus. It's just Mega and then Losaurus. Maybe they were tired when they were writing their papers. Didn't proofread. It's just funny that misspellings mean, well, that's a new name for it. In the late 20th and early 21st century, Ronan Alleyne and Dan Shur said that the fossils found in the same quarry as Megalosaurus may be multiple types of dinosaurs. Shocking. Some researchers said that there were no distinguishing characteristics between Megalosaurus and other relatives, making Megalosaurus a gnomon dubium. But in 2008, Roger Benson and colleagues analyzed Megalosaurus and identified distinguishing characteristics in its lower jaw. So take that, Megalosaurus skeptics. These characteristics include a wide longitudinal groove on the outer surface of the dentary, the third tooth socket not being enlarged, and tall interdental plates that reinforce the teeth. No complete skeleton of Megalosaurus has been found yet, but Benson published a detailed study of the gnome bones in 2010. The first researchers of Megalosaurus thought that it was a giant lizard 66 feet or 20 meters long. Richard Owen in 1842 said that it was 30 feet or 9 meters long and was quadrupedal. And nowadays it's thought to be 23 feet or 7 meters long and weighing 1.1 tons and being bipedal, with a long tail for balance. Although in some sources I saw that it was up to 30 feet or 9 meters long and 10 feet or 3 meters tall. Megalosaurus had short forelimbs, a large head, a lot of muscle, and long curved teeth. It was bipedal, had a long tail, long hind limbs with three forward-facing toes, and short forelimbs with three digits each. Its large head was long and had dagger-like teeth. Although not much is known about the skull, but they think the lower jaw was probably narrow. It was probably an apex predator. It may have hunted stegosaurs and sauropods. Early descriptions, interestingly, have it hunting iguanodon, though we know that iguanodon actually lived much later. But it may have killed sauropods, or it may have also been a scavenger. Megalosaurus has been in the media. Actually, the first mention of it was in Charles Dickinson's serial novel, Bleak House, which was published between 1852 and 1853. And that's one of the first dinosaur references in literature. And here's the line that references it. Quote, 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 40 feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. End quote. Interestingly, William Buckland's son, Franklin Trevelyn Buckland, was one of the first people to come up with the idea that, hey, maybe dinosaurs gave rise to these dragon myths from medieval times, or that were based in medieval times. Although the Crystal Palace, the glass house, burned down in 1936, you can see Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Megalosaurus. It's been restored. And you can see the Megalosaurus statue in London, in the neighborhood called Crystal Palace. Around the same time that Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built the Megalosaurus statue, Edouard Roux drew the famous image of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon in a vicious battle. This is, however, very inaccurate, especially since Iguanodon was an herbivore. But still fun. And lastly, if you ever watch the TV show Dinosaurs, the Jim Henson show from the early 90s, Earl Sinclair is a Megalosaurus. He's the father figure. So Megalosaurus was a theropod and a titanuron. And titanuray means stiff tails and is a clad that includes more theropods. The clad appeared in the earlier Middle Jurassic, but it wasn't named until 1986 by Jacques Gauthier. And it includes all theropods more closely related to modern birds than ceratosaurs.