History Daily - Saturday Matinee: I Know Dino

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

On today’s Saturday Matinee, dig into the history of the very first dinosaur to be named-- before the term "dinosaur" was even coined. Link to I Know Dino: https://www.iknowdino.com/ Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.

I was vacationing in Chicago recently, just in time to enjoy a city clogged with wildfire smoke. Thanks, Canada, but, you know, I'm sure we deserved it. Anyway, all that smoke chased us indoors, and that meant museums. I can't tell you how otherworldly it is to view with your own eyes, famous paintings like George Zara's Asande on La Grande Jean, Grant Woods, American Gothic, or Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. I don't know how many thousands of times I've seen these images, But in person, they become alive, special, and communicate so much more.

But we also made it to the Field Museum of Natural History, just before a late lunch at the original Mr. Beef. Now, that sandwich, ordered hot, sweet, and juicy, was great. But the real star that day was Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum. Ten tons of terror with a phalanx of teeth-like knives offset by those adorable little arms. Amazing to see her in person because really who doesn't love dinosaurs. And if you do, you're in for a treat.

On today's Saturday matinee, we're sharing an episode from the podcast, I Know Dino, detailing the first dinosaur ever to be named Megalosaurus, even before the word dinosaur was in use. It turns out that even the prehistoric has a history. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow I Know Dino. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Hello and welcome to I Know Dino.

I'm Garrett. And I'm Sabrina. And today in our 482 episode, we're celebrating 200 years of dinosaurs, specifically 200 years of megalosaurus. Yes, the first non-avian dinosaur to be named, so it's kind of like we're celebrating the history of dinosaurs. And megalosaurus was named exactly 200 years and one day before this episode came out. Yesterday we did a special live event about megalosaurus, and it's yesterday from when this is released, but it hasn't happened yet from when we're recording this. So hopefully it went well. I'm just going to say it did.

Okay. I like the optimism. We did art. We talked about megalosaurus trivia. And don't worry, if you weren't able to make it to our free live event, we'll be covering. a lot of the megalosaurus history and fun facts in this episode. I guess that's good that this episode didn't come out before because we probably spoil all the trivia than we did in the event.

But before we get into all of that, as always, we'd like to thank some of our patrons for helping to make our show possible and also making that live stream possible. And they also got first dibs at joining the limited number of seats. And this week we have two new patrons to thank. They are Alea and Draconosaur. Thank you both very much for joining. Yes. And then rounding out our shoutouts,

our random drawing winners that we haven't had for a couple weeks because we had so many new patrons are Paul M. Dragon Feathers, Kaylee, Jurassic Jim, Chuck, Maria, Seamus B., and Remy Rodriguez. Thank you so much. Again, because of our patrons, that's why we're able to do this podcast, but also cool stuff, like these live events that we're trying out. Yeah, depending on the reaction, we might be doing more.

Love to see. Mm-hmm. So before we get into megalosaurus and the history of dinosaurs, I wanted to call out a cool paper that talks about how dinosaurs can be ambassadors for humans. This was published in current biology by Jacob Vintr. And people have known about dinosaurs for quite some time. We'll get into that more with our fun fact. Dinosaurs, of course, we know, are exciting and they're fun to talk about. And we always say that dinosaurs are a gateway to science.

And you can connect dinosaurs with all sorts of topics, which we've been seeing lately with our dinosaur connection challenge. So this paper talks about. about how dinosaurs are attention-grabbing, and the author wrote, quote, upon reflection, I've realized that this fascination and appeal to dinosaurs could be used for good, end quote. Because, like we're saying, you can use dinosaurs to explain other concepts. For example, physics, maybe there's a book where you talk about calculating the pressure

a barosaurus is, which is a long-necked, large dino, its heart needs to pump to transfer blood to its brain. Yeah. Or like that one study where they were trying to do it in person, like with a giant model, and it broke open and dumped simulated blood all over the place. Oh, I forgot about that one. Because it takes a lot of pressure, it turns out. Yeah. So there's all kinds of ways to connect dinosaurs. And this author co-created a play for children, six and up and also for adults, exploring fossil melanin and dinosaur colors with songs and music, which. which sounded really cool. So like a theater musical?

Yes. The play is called The Color of Dinosaurs. They debuted it last October at the Bristol Old Vic in Bristol in the UK. They performed 13 shows over 10 days. And in the show, they included fossils and a reconstruction of a satacosaurus named D. And the author said that they got lots of great feedback. And kids and parents were excited and felt like they learned a lot. So they're going to be performing again this May and June at the end.

the Poga Theater in London. And it's just a really great example of science outreach and how influential dinosaurs can be, especially after we keep saying 200 years, even though people have known about dinosaurs for many, many more years than 200 years. Millennia more. Yes. They just weren't called dinosaurs and they didn't come to those conclusions the way that we're used to talking about them.

Yes. But I think this is a good example of, how popular dinosaurs are and how fun they can be to teach you so many types of concepts. Yeah. It's come a long way too because when megalosaurus was named, nobody was in the popular culture was particularly interested in it because back then people were more interested in maybe human evolution, but even not so much that. It was more just like, what are these interesting big mammals that were around were more exciting to people? And maybe Pleasiosaurus were pretty interesting and and ichthyosaurs, some of the marine things were a lot more popular.

Dinosaur was not a household name for many years later. And now it's gotten to a point where you can make a play about it and every kid already knows what it means and is excited to get involved with it. Yes, though I will say megalosaurus did get mentioned in some literary works shortly after being named. We'll get into that. Oh, cool. But yes, on to our Megalosaur mania.

And I want to thank Tyrant King, one of our patrons, for suggesting this topic. It seemed really fitting for our Megalosaurus episode. And we'll get into the details of Megalosaurus in our Dinosaur of the Day. But first, megilosaurus, and we've talked about this a lot on the show, was a wastebasket taxon. So the name Megalosaurus was used to name a lot of other carnivorous dinosaurs over the years. In fact, over 50 species of Megalosaurus have been. named. That's a ridiculous number. Yes. Especially we were just talking about how usually when we talk about dinosaurs, there's just the one species. But this was the first dinosaur and they hadn't

come up with that standard yet. And instead, it was like, well, there's a lot of these large, extinct animals that have big jaws and sharp teeth. Surely they're a megawasaurus. They must all be closely related because they all look pretty similar. Yep. I mean they were related. Yeah. Just not even close to at the genus level. So today there is only one valid species, and that's Megalosaurus Buckland Eye. So just 2% of the originals? Yes. Still valid. And I'm not going to get into all 50 plus species, but a few of them do include Megalosaurus Cuvieri, which was named by Richard Owen in 1842, based on a vertebra that has been lost. That also seems to be a theme with megalosaurus here, bones that have been lost.

Oh, yeah, that definitely doesn't help their case as being a valid species. Yes, but it was from the Jurassic. Later, that bone became known as streptospondalus cuvieri. And we talk about streptospondalus. We talked about it back in episode 363, but the gist is that it's a medium-sized theropod, it had powerful legs, sharp teeth, and short arms, and the genus name means turned vertebra.

Good. Yes. Which brings me to you streptospondalus, which was named in 1964 by Walker. We talked about that one in episode 109. They found a mostly complete skeleton from the Jurassic in what is now England. And at first it was thought to be Megalosaurus Buckland Eye, but then Nobscha reassigned it to streptospondalus Cuvieri.

And then Alec Walker named it as you streptospondalus oxoniansis. And there's a whole bunch of reasons it went into streptospondalus Cuvieri, even though there wasn't much to compare it to, but it had to do with where it was found. Anyway, the genus name U streptospondalus means true streptospondalus. Because the original streptospondalus was not exciting enough, but this is the real deal. Yeah. Well, this one, they found a mostly complete skeleton, so that is more exciting.

It is. Then there's megalosaurus horridus, named by Lady in 1856, which got changed to dinadan horridis a year later. It's only known from some teeth that were found in Montana in the Judith River for me. It's the same species name as Triceratops Hortis. Yep. Because you're allowed to reuse species names, just not the genus part. Yep. It was exciting because these are the first Tyrannosaurid fossils described.

It's possible the teeth belong to gorgasaurus, Libratis, but it's hard to know from just the teeth. But if they can confirm it's definitely gorgasaurus, someone can make a case for gorgasaurus being referred to as, Dinod. Good point. But they probably wouldn't because Corgosaurus is such a well-known and widely used to name that they don't usually do that.

Good point. Another one is Megalosaurus cloacanus named by Queenstead in 1858 based on a tooth from Loeate Triassic.

This one's now considered to be a nomum dubium. That species name sounds an awful lot like cloaca. Yes. That is how I chose to pronounce it. In 1869, Eugene Ude's De Longchamps named Megalosaurus Insignis based on a tooth that was a third longer than megalosaurus Bucklandized tooth. This one is also now considered to be a nomadubium, and it was also destroyed in 1944 by bombing. Lady named another megalosaurus, Megalosaurus Valens, in 1870.

But that one became Pochilopelron Valens. Then it became Antrodemus Valens. Then it became Alasaurus Valens. And then eventually Antrodemus Valens again. The genus name means chamber-bodied, if we go by Antrodemis. It's dubious. It lived in the late Jurassic and the Moris information. So it's not even considered to be its own genus anymore?

Yeah, it's dubious. It's based on one bone that Ferdinon Hayden got secondhand in 1869, and Hayden, if that name sounds familiar, was a geologist who did surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains. At first, they thought it looked like a petrified horse hoof. Then lady studied it and found it to be a tail vertebra or tailbone. Charles Gilmore in 1920 said, that antrodemus and allosaurus should be synonyms because the tail vertebrae looked the same.

And antrodemus is the older name. It was named in 1873 versus alisaurus was named in 1878. So they said, well, that should make it antrodemus. But then more than 50 years later, James Madsen published about the Cleveland Lloyd alisaurus specimens. There's over 12,000 bones and found that the name alasaurus should be used instead because we only know the one tailbone of antrodemus, and there aren't really. really any unique features there, and we also don't know exactly where that bone was found.

So, Antrodemus is now a nomum dubium. That would be a big controversy if Allosaurus became Antrodemus. Well, it did for a while. That's not as good of a name. Even though Allosaurus, in terms of its meaning, isn't all that exciting. It just sounds good. We're also used to it. It's true.

In 1871, Bunzel named Megalosaurus Schneidemi, but many, many years later, 2012, it became a junior synonym of Dachosaurus Maximus, which was named in 1846. They found isolated teeth in Germany from the late Jurassic, and Dacosaurus is actually a crocodile morph. Its name means bite lizard. Bite lizard, that's an interesting one.

So not only was Megalusory, Megalosaurus being used as a wastebasket taxon for dinosaurs. Basically, everybody's just throwing species into megalosaurus if they're dinosaurs, but also some crocodile relatives. Mm-hmm. Well, it had sharp teeth. It did. That's a good point.

If all you have his teeth, maybe they look similar. In 1903, if you can't, Dom, I'm going in somewhat of a chronological order here, Dalo named Megalosaurus Lanziensis, which, that's a good. then became Ornithymimus Lanzianis, and then struthiumimimis Lanzianis. And it's all based on a claw that's now thought to be some sort of allisoroid claw. Very different. Some sort of alasoroid. Yes.

It seems like a lot of these are probably dubious now. Or got reclassified. In 1925, there was megalosaurus Saharacus, which then became Carcarydontosaurus Sahiricus. And we talked about Carcaryodontosaurus way back in episode 24. It's a popular one. Yeah. It was named based on two teeth found in Algeria, and it lived in the Cretaceous. These were the first theropod bones described from that area.

The species name refers to the Sahara Desert. Hune also named Megalosaurus Africanus based on the same teeth on accident in 1956. So Megalosaurus Africanus became a junior synonym of Megalosaurus Saharis. I like Sahara Kiss as a species name better. Yeah, rolls off the tongue. It's a lot more specific to naming a species after an entire continent like Africanus is just like, that's not very specific. That it's from Africa. I mean, Sahara is pretty big too, but a little more specific.

Yes. Fortunately, those two original teeth have been lost. But in the 1960s, paleontologists found fossils in that area from Carcaryodontosaurus. and Carcaryodontosaurus was named by Ernstromer in 1931, and he named it based on fossils found in 1914 that included a partial skull, vertebrae, parts of the pelvis, and parts of the hand and legs. In 1926, Hume named Megalosaurus Lidekari,

which then became Magnosaurus. It lived in the middle Jurassic in what is now England and was named based on a tooth, but there's more to it than that. So first, Friedrich von Hune named Megalosaurus Nethercomensis. in 1923, based on a partial skeleton, the jaws, vertebrae, parts of the pelvis, and parts of the leg. And then he named Megalosaurus Lidecarii based on a tooth. In 1932, he changed Megalosaurus nethercomensis to Magnosaurus and referred the Lidecary tooth to it as well.

But it wasn't until the 1990s that scientists really looked at the differences between Megalosaurus and Magnosaurus, and there are differences such as in the shin bones. and we do talk about Magnosaurus in episode 407. So one that's still considered valid? Yep. Hey, hey. Yeah, there are quite a few that are still valid. Just not a megalosaurus anymore.

But we still have Megalosaurus Buckland Eye. Mm-hmm. And then the last one I want to mention is Torvosaurus. That was named in 1979 by Galton and Jensen. And it's a sister taxa to Megalosaurus. It lived in the Jurassic and what is now Europe. We talked a little bit about it in episode 16, at least the second species, Torvosaurus Gurnei. There are two species.

There's also Torvosaurus Tannerai. There were some fossils found in Tanzania that were named, quote-unquote, Megalosaurus Ingens by Janinch in 1920, and that's based on a 4.7-inch or 12-centimeter-long tooth. And then it got reclassified as Torvosaurus in 2020. So those are some of the links of megalosaurus to other dinosaurs. Yeah. Dinosaurs that we still consider valid and some that we no longer do. It's interesting to me how many Tyrannosaurs showed up in the megalosaurus genus,

considering megalosaurus was about 100 million years before T-Rex that, I mean, I could appreciate if they were found really close together and in a similar layer of, of rock that you'd say, okay, well, they're all megalosaurus and all these big teeth. But when one is 100 million years later, like when you have Torvosaurus, which is just late Cretaceous versus what, like Middle Jurassic, that's a huge time range to be lumping together things in the same genus. Yeah, and I mentioned a few that were fossils found from the Triassic, too. So they had the entire Mesozoic spanned for named with Megalosaurus.

That's really funny. I think that's what happens when you're the first. one and people are still piecing together and there's so much, I had no idea what we didn't know. Yeah. And whether or not they had good dating on those rocks yet is another question. And it could also just be one of those differences where over time, like we were saying, people sort of have landed on a standard where you usually just do one species per genus, but there are other parts of the animal kingdom where there's hundreds of species in a single

genus. So I guess it just depends. That's one of those lumper versus splitter. I think also as more fossils were found, it was easier to spot the differences. Yes. And as you fill in the family tree, and megalosaurus ends up showing up all over the place. And you can't have a megalosaurus tyrannosaur over here and a megalosaurus carnosaur over here and other named things in between because they have to be the closest relatives if they're in the same genus name. So that's our Megalosaur mania, at least in of species. Mm-hmm. Before we get into Megalosaurus Revisited,

we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors. And now we'll get into Megalosaurus Revisited. We first covered Megalosaurus as our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 47. Not much has changed since then, but for this episode, since we're celebrating Megalosaurus, we can talk about the history of Megalosaurus and how our understanding of it. has changed. We've definitely learned a lot since episode 47.

We have, yes. But in terms of research done on megalosaurus, hasn't changed too much. In the last eight years. Yeah. Considering it was named 200 years ago. It's a small fraction. Especially once all those species got sorted out. Yeah.

So megalosaurus was probably the first dinosaur fossil ever described, at least in the way that we described dinosaur fossils today. And I say that because the first fossil was found in 1676. The first dinosaur fossil. Likely megalosaurus fossil, yeah. It was also the first and third dinosaur fossils to be illustrated were a megawasaurus bones. The first one was quote unquote scrotum humanum in 1677. And just for fun, the second dinosaur fossil illustrated was of a sauropod tooth.

And then the third dinosaur fossil was a fish tooth. It turned out to be a megalosaurus tooth. But at the time in 1699, they thought it was a fish tooth. And then later figured out it belonged to a theropod. Yeah, and that was, I believe, in a drawing of a whole bunch of teeth, right? I might be mixing it up with another picture because a lot of these early discoveries were teeth. I'm a lot more familiar with the story of scrotum humanum than I am with this fish tooth. Okay.

And unfortunately that tooth has been lost. Fish tooth. Fish tooth turned megalosaurus tooth. So scrotum humanim was a lower leg bone or femur that was described by Robert Plot. The bone was so large, there were a lot of stories on where this large bone could possibly have come from. One idea at first was that it was a large elephant that Romans rode into battle, and then later it was thought to be a giant human. Thus the scrotum, humanity. Well, I'll get into that.

Really quick, we think it was probably a megalosaurus leg bone based on this detailed illustration. There's enough details to know that, because unfortunately the bone has been lost. And based on where it came from. Yes. Now, we've even talked about it on our show before that we thought it was called. called scrotum humannum because people thought it looked like a pair of human testicles. But it turns out that could have just been an error by the illustrator accidentally captioning it wrong. Because Robert Plott never said that.

He actually always said it was a leg bone. Yeah, it's a pretty clear part of a fever. When you look at it, it's like, okay, that is very much the articulating surface that you see at the end of a leg bone. I think once it was published as scrotum Humanimum that did lead to people talking about it as if it were testicles. Like I said, the bone has been lost. The paleontologist Darren Nash

has made an effort to find it and had a really in-depth blog post about this and it seemed promising because he'd heard from a colleague that there was a bone that looked a lot like it at the Asmolian Museum in Oxford. So he and a team studied it but then figured out that it weighed only half as much

as the original bone should. So for now, the original bone is still considered to be lost. William Buckland officially named Megalosaurus on February 20th, 1824, the whole reason we're celebrating 200 years. 200 years and a day ago? Yes. And that was based on a partial jaw that was found near Oxford. Buckland and William Coney Bear worked together to study those fossils, and then Buckland's wife, Mary, illustrated those bones. She's a very good artist.

Yes, it's a beautiful illustration. And Coney Bear was the one who came up with the name Megalosaurus. It was the name Megalosaurus announced in 1822, but not formally. So briefly, it was a gnomum newdom. Yeah, partly because it didn't have a species name. It was just megalosaurus. It didn't get a species name until a few years after it was officially named. But George Cuvier urged Buckland to formally name the animal.

So Buckland formally named it Megalosaurus. Again, just megalosaurus, no species name, but it got that formal name on February 20th of 1824, and a meeting of the Geological Society of London, which is the same meeting where Coney Bear described a complete Pleasiosaurus. So a lot going on to that meeting. Yeah. When I read it, to me, it felt a little bit like a plead, and I'll read it to you, and then maybe you'll see what I mean.

He said, quote, I am induced to lay before the geological. Society, the annexed representations of parts of the skeleton of an enormous fossil animal found at Stonesfield near Woodstock about 12 miles to the northwest of Oxford. In the hope that imperfect, as are the present materials, their communication to the public may induce those who possess other parts of the same reptile to transmit to the society such further information as may lead to a more complete elucidation of its osteology, end quote. So to me, that sounded like, please, we've named this dinosaur or we've named, because the word dinosaur hadn't been coined yet, we've named this animal, we only have a few of its bones. If you have more information, please let us

know. That's how it sounded like to me. Yeah, it does sound that way, especially where they're specifying 12 miles northwest of Oxford. So, like, if you found anything, like almost like you're putting up a lost pet poster, but instead it's like lost dinosaur bones, last seen 12 miles northwest of Oxford, Please contact George Cuvier. Well, William Buckland. Oh, yeah, Buckland. Yes. They did, like I said, they named it based on that right lower jaw with one tooth, but there

were also some vertebrae, a neck rib, a rib, parts of the pelvis and hips, a thigh bone, and a part of the foot. So it's not a bad start. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's a lot better than finds today often are. And you can see most of these bones at the Oxford University Museum of Natural history, which we have a really cool display. It is.

It's very old school. It's also a very old school building, so it all fits together nicely. But it is cool to see just sort of the humble beginnings. Even though it is better than some finds, there's no complete skull. You mostly have that jaw is the most charismatic part of the fossil with a couple teeth in it. And yeah, there is a hip and some leg going with it. So you get sort of the general idea about how big it is and the fact that it probably stood bipedally fairly tall-ish and that it had big sharp teeth. But other than that, you don't really get much of a sense of what it exactly looked like.

Right. But there is a good description of the history of how it was found and then some illustrations that show how we, how our understanding of how it's looked has changed over the years. Yes. Yeah, of course, as we find more close relatives, we can fill in some of those gaps. Yes. So as I said, Buckland didn't give megalosaurus a species name, and that happened a lot in those days. Ferdinand von Ricken first tried to give it a species name as Megalosaurus conibere eye in 1826, but no one really used that one. So it's a nomen oblique.

And then in 1827, Gideon, Gideon, who named the second dinosaur, Aguonodon, named it Megalosaurus Bucklandeye, and that's the name that has stuck. It's fitting. Yeah. It is. Coney Bear Eye is also fitting since they worked on the fossil together, so I can see why that name also came up. But as I mentioned, Richard Owen didn't coin that term dinosaur

until almost 20 years after megalosaurus was named. The word dinosaur wasn't really a word until 1841. So set your calendars for 2041 when we do the 200th anniversary of the word dinosaur. Oh my goodness. That feels far away. At least seven megawasolaris. individuals have been found and a lot of teeth have been found. There's some trace fossils thought to belong to megalosaurus, some tracks that have been found

near Oxford. But as we mentioned in our trace fossil miniseries, it's really hard to know for sure what animal made the traces. Yes. Yeah. The footprint might look like a megalosaurus foot, but there were a lot of other big three-toed animals walking around. Yeah.

So even though I just said that they had a good number of bones. to start with. It wasn't really much to work with, especially when you're working with the first what turns out to be non-avian dinosaur named. Yes. Yeah. So in today's context, where we have tons of different dinosaurs to help fill in gaps, getting that much is decent because it'll show you a lot of where it fits in the family tree. But if you're trying to piece together an entire animal from scratch without any of the skull, that's not so good. Yes. So Buckland, his estimates are a bit different from today's estimates.

He estimated that megalosaurus was 60 to 70 feet long, and he thought that megalosaurus was probably amphibious. He also thought that megalosaurus looked like a giant lizard that walked on all fours, though he did understand that based on its thigh bone, it would have been more upright than sprawled. And you can see this giant lizard look in Crystal Palace dinosaurs, which were made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in the 1850s. I also kind of think it looks bear-like.

Yes. But with a long, dragging tail and a small hump around its neck. Yeah, if you had to describe it compared to any modern living animal, or maybe even including extinct animals, a bear is probably the best description. Yeah, but with a longer face. Yeah, a little bit. And it looks a lot like the iguanodon and the hylaesaurus.

that they made for Crystal Palace dinosaurs. So they clearly had a sort of, this is what a dinosaur looked like idea. And then with some slight variations on the theme. Yes. Which in real life, it's funny because those three look nothing alike. You've got an anchylosaur, a hadroseroid or or nithopod. And, yeah, a theropod.

I mean, I guess two of them are bipedal at least. Yeah. But all three of them were quadrupedal in Crystal Palace. Yes. But again, early days. and they gave megalosaurus the hump on the shoulder based on high spines that they thought belonged to megalosaurus but now we know that they belong to beckles spinex which is now known as alto spine x and that altospinax we only know the three back vertebrae which has very tall spines so the paleo art on that is speculative and those spines are nearly 14 inches or about 35 centimeters tall yeah that i mean if you put those in a part of megalosaurus's back, you would end up with a hump. Yep.

So that's totally reasonable. And I'll get into what we think megawasaurus looks like today, but first, another break for our sponsors. So now Megalosaurus is estimated to be about 30 feet or nine meters long and weighing 1,500 pounds or 700 kilograms. Although there are later estimates that put it at 20 feet or 6 meters long. So it's what half to a third of the original length estimate? Yep. I mean, 60 to 70 feet long for a predator would be really impressive. Yes.

And it is hard to know the exact size of megalosaurus because we are missing some bones that would help. And no complete skeletons have been found yet. But like you said earlier, Garret, finds of close relatives like Torvosaurus have helped. And again, Torvosaurus is Megalosaurus's closest relative being a scientist. sister taxon. So someone could lump those two together potentially and argue that they should both be species of megalosaurus. Oh. I'm just saying someone could. If the only sister tax are eligible for being lumped like that, all the other ones that are like Tyrannosaurus elsewhere will never be a megalosaurus again. So like we were saying, we now know that megalosaurus walked on two

legs, not four, and it kept its tail off the ground. It had a short, wide shoulder blade, a robust, humorous, or upper arm, and overall was pretty robust and muscled. It had short arms and a long head. Its skull isn't too well known, but it does seem to have had a large head with large teeth and a robust lower jaw. It's very robust? Yes. Lots of muscles, and it may have been an apex predator. But despite its overall robustness, maybe compared to it. It's overall robustness, maybe compared to other theropods and dinosaurs, compared to the original depictions of megalosaurus, it's a skinny, like, grass aisle animal because it went from like tree trunks for front limbs and hind limbs to much skinnier legs and, you know, regular arms. Yes.

And also a much smaller head rather than that giant triangular head. Good point. Good point. It's much less lumbery looking. Yeah, it looks like a typical theropod, basically. It lived in coastal habitats, and that might have been what led Buckland to believe it was amphibious. There's still a lot we don't know about megalosaurus, though. At one point, there was even a debate about whether or not megalosaurus was valid. Was it a nomadubium after being a wastebasket taxon with the more than 50 species classified as megalosaurus? But then Roger Benson and others analyzed megalosaurus bones in.

found, yes, it had unique characters in the lower jaw and it was valid. Yeah, I mean, they have quite a bit of it. So there should be enough there to identify it as a species. And then it's got to have priority, right? Because people have been talking about it forever and lumping all sorts of species into that genus. Yeah, it would feel weird to have megalosaurus go away. Yeah, yeah.

So the type and now only species again is megalosaurus Buckland Eye. The genus name means great. lizard and against the first non-avian dinosaur to be named the way that we named dinosaurs today. It lived in the middle Jurassic in what is now England. And the species named Buckland Eye is in honor of William Buckland. Yeah. It's interesting because I always hear it pronounced Buckland Eye, but it's spelled like Bucklandi. Because there's two eyes at the end.

Yes. But I've always heard Buckland Eye. So I'm glad you're saying it that way. That's, yep, that's what we're going with here. Like I mentioned earlier, Gary, Megalosaurus has been mentioned in literary works. Bleak House, written by Charles Dickens, was a novel first published as a 20-episode serial between 1852 and 1853.

So I guess that's quite a few years after Megalosaurus was named, but still within just a few decades. Yeah, and that's way before. the word dinosaur became a household name because that's still before the Crystal Palace dinosaurs or right around the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Yeah. And he wrote in the first paragraph, quote, it would not be wonderful to meet a megalosaurus, 40 feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill, end quote.

That's true. Maybe an understatement, not being wonderful to meet a huge predator. Yes. I guess it depends on your context. I would think it was wonderful to meet a megalosaurus. Ew. At least for a couple seconds. Maybe a well-fed megalosaurus.

Yeah, or meet it from a distance, like those vehicles where you could maybe meet a polar bear, but it's down like 10 feet below you. So Charles Dickens is sometimes cited as the first time mentioning megalosaurus in literature. But it turns out that that's not true, though he was involved with the first time, at least from what I could find. Maybe there's an even earlier time. If someone knows, let us know. But Charles Dickens edited a weekly literary magazine called Household Words. And Megalosaurus is mentioned in the August 16th, 1851 edition, Volume 3, number 73, if you want to look it up. It was written by Henry Morley in the story,

Our Phantom Ship on an Anti-Diluvian Cruise, and in the story we voyage into the past. And Megalosaurus gets a whole paragraph instead of just the one line in this story. Wow, and it's earlier. That's cool. So I'll read it to you. Quote, here is a land reptile before which we take the liberty of running. His teeth look too decidedly carnivorous.

A sort of crocodile 30 feet long with a big body mounted on high, thick legs is not likely to be friendly with our legs and bodies. Megalosaurus is his name and doubtless greedy is his nature. Mercy upon us. There's a young crocodile flying. Look at his long jaw and sharp teeth. He is sweeping down upon us, stretching his long neck out. He touches ground, not after us, but yonder little kangaroo, no bigger than a rat. But now the last little crocodile tucks his wings under his arms. They work on an enormously long little finger. He tucks his wings under his arms and begins running on four legs as if he really were a little crocodile and not a bird. Megalosaurus is after him. Away he runs into a lake of water. swimming there like a fish and now lands, takes flight, and perches on a tree. That's a very interesting description.

Yes. So in that the whole flying crocodile thing, I guess, is a pterosaur, and megalosaurus is trying to catch it? I think so. It's interesting, too, that in this earlier description, Megalosaurus is 30 feet long, and then Charles Dickens says 40 feet long. Yeah, and other people are saying 50 to 60 feet long. Well, 15 and 60 was the first, yeah. Oh, that was way back.

Okay. Yeah. In the beginning, it sounded like, oh, yeah, that's a pretty good description of megalosaurus. And then there's this whole flying crocodile thing in the middle where it's like, okay. Yeah, that's an older writing. Yes. But a pretty good description of megalosaurus still in that, you know, it's a scary carnivorous reptile, correct use of reptile rather than calling it a lizard or something. Mm-hmm.

And that it stood high off the ground even saying, you know, the big body mounted high on thick legs. Like you were saying, the robustness. So, yeah, that's a cool description. Yeah. I do like reading dinosaur fiction. Yeah. I think it's starting to become a bigger thing. But it's nice to know it's been around for a while.

Mm-hmm. And our fun fact, turns out I did the whole episode on Megalosaurus. You sure did. Our fun fact has to do with people knowing about dinosaurs well before Richard Owen and before megalosaurus was named. The first dinosaur fossil found in Africa may have been found 500 years before Robert Plott found his megalosaurus scrotum-humanum bone.

This was published in Geological Society London's special publications by Julian Benoit and others. So again, the way that we study and how we talk about and understand dinosaurs today goes back to megalosaurs and the first fossils found in the 1600s. But again, people have known about dinosaurs much longer than that. Dinosaurs have been inspiring people all over the world well before Richard Owen coined the term in 1841. There are legends of dragons and serpents in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America. In Western Australia, there are large dinosaur tracks that resembled a

enormous emu prints that inspired people. In North America, people have talked about monstrous animals with large teeth and claws that used to dominate the land before turning to stone. And for this paper, the team studied fossils in South Africa. According to an article in the conversation, they said, quote, we discover that there has been interest in fossils in Africa for as long as there have been people on the continent, end quote. So maybe much longer than 500 years ago. Yes, but it's hard to prove. So one example is there's an archaeological site, the site of Bolala in Lesotho. It was occupied between 1,100 to 1700 AD, and it's also surrounded by sediments that date back from 200 to 180 million years ago. Okay, so that 500 years is 500

years plus or minus a couple hundred years. Yes. Gotcha. So that area of Lusito is known for dinosaurs such as massospondalus. Nice. And in 1990, archaeologists, not paleontologists, but archaeologists, found a mastisbondalus fingerbone that had been moved to a cave. And there were no fossil skeletons in the cave.

So it seems that somebody picked it up and took it to the cave. And maybe it was a toy or they took it out of curiosity or it could have been for healing rituals, it's unclear why it was taken to the cave. Or like a kid that just picks up a rock on the way home. Yeah. It's also not clear when that bone came to that cave. So it could have been any time between 1,100 and 1,700 AD. So if it was 1,100, that means almost up to 500 years before Robert Plott found his dinosaur bone.

But like you were saying, Gary, it could have been after as well. There's a lot of fossils that have been found after heavy rains. We see this all over the world, even today, like in the last few years. After heavy rains, we hear about some big dinosaur discoveries. Yeah. And other fossils. Yeah, rivers are really good at eroding out, riverbanks, and then fossils pop out of them, just like they do along seashores.

Yeah. And some of these fossils in Lusitu have been identified as a dragon-like monster, known as Columulumo. I think we've heard about that one before. I think so, too. So this paper, they reviewed what's known about African indigenous knowledge of fossils, but there is still a lot to learn. I'd love that stuff so much. It's so cool to hear about how people have been interested in these bones and these fossils that they found before Western civilization had a name dinosaur.

You don't have to have the word dinosaur to appreciate the fossils and to find them interesting and to find some meaning in them. And to even understand fossilization that things turn to stone. Yeah. And I love that some of those early groups, earlier groups, notice the connection to birds, like immediately, whereas it became such debate in England and the Americas and places for many years before people finally accepted that modern birds are in fact dinosaurs. There were people that were like a thousand years before that were like, of course, these are. tracks of a giant bird. That's not hard to understand. Yes. So that wraps up this episode of Ino dino and our celebration of 200 years of dinosaur history. I guess 200 plus if you count all the people who were talking about fossils before megalosaurus.

Stay tuned next week. We have another new dinosaur to talk about, a small one from Morocco. Nice. And if you want links to the sources from this episode, then head over to our website, our show notes on I KnowDino.com. Thanks again. And until next time.