Happy 200th birthday Megalosaurus! Megalosaurus is an extinct genus of theropod dinosaur which lived throughout what is now Europe during the middle Jurassic period some 174 to 163 mya. Although it now only exists in drawings what is thought to be the first fragment of Megalosaurus consisting of a partial femur was discovered in 1676 from a limestone quarry in Oxfordshire by professor Robert Plot, who due to the unprecedented nature of the find, declared it to belong to a biblical giant. In 1763 the bone was given the name 'Scrotum humanum' by Richard Brookes, due to the rather crass yet accurate appearance of the end of the bone to a human scrotum. This name/description was never formerly accepted by any scientific body, but did prompt Rev. William Buckland to begin amassing various other remains from that same Oxfordshire quarry including a piece of a right lower jaw, a thigh bone, ribs, some pelvises, a foot bone, and several vertebrae. After years of study Buckland realized that these specimens all belonged to the same species of giant reptile which he named Megalosaurus meaning great lizard on February 20th 1824. Megalosaurus was 1 of 3 genera which Richard Owen used to found the Clade Dinosaur, marking Megalosaurus as the first non avian dinosaur to be formally described. Over the following centuries over 50 species would be classified as Megalosaurus however nearly all have been determined to belong to other taxa, leaving only the original Megalosaurus bucklandi as valid. Reaching around 20ft in length and 1,500lbs in weight megalosaurus was amongst mid-Jurassic Europe’s largest predators. It had a long tail, strong stout legs, a robust body, short yet muscular arms, and large head, equipped with long curved teeth. In life Megalosaurus would have inhabited tropical forests, wetlands, and coastlines feeding upon fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aquatic reptiles, and other dinosaurs in the island chain that at the time constituted Europe.
Art used belongs to the following creators
Megalosaurus: Julius T. Csotonyi
Megalosaurus through the ages: Nix Draws Stuff
It's time for Retro vs Modern Month! Every weekday this March we'll be looking at some examples of how our paleontological understanding and
Megalosaurs 200th Anniversary: NazRigar
