FastCounter by bCentral
The History of Thecodontosaurus
1834 - Present: A Recent History of Thecodontosaurus
Thecodontosaurus, named by Riley and Stutchbury, 1836 was only the fourth dinosaur genus to be named from Britain, and from anywhere in the world, after Megalosaurus (1824), Iguanodon (1825), and Hylaeosaurus (1833). Thecodontosaurus and Paleosaurus, also named in the 1836 paper, represent the first reptiles to be described from the Triassic (Riley and Stutchbury, 1836, 1837, 1840).
Dr Henry Riley and Mr Samuel Stutchbury began to excavate specimens of 'saurian animals' in autumn, 1834 in the limestone quarries of Durdham Down, Clifton, Bristol. These quarries are now largely infilled or built over. The first accounts of the new saurian remains were short announcements in 1834 and 1835 (Anon., 1834; Williams, 1835).
Henry Riley (1797-1848) was a local surgeon and medical school teacher who had been trained in Paris. He gave a successful series of lectures in Bristol, emphasising the works of Lamarck, Cuvier, and Geoffroy, and was a member of the important group of gentleman naturalists who founded the Bristol Institution in the 1820s.
Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859) began his professional career as an assistant at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Stutchbury was then employed as curator of the Bristol Institution in 1831, and served there until 1850 when he went to Australia as mineral surveyor for New South Wales.
Riley and Stutchbury read a paper about the new reptile finds to the Geological Society of London in March, 1836, and to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in Bristol later that year. The 1836 account is not illustrated, but it gives a full page of description of the new genus Thecodontosaurus, and indicates the repository of the jaw bone and other elements, in the Museum of the Bristol Institution, and can hence be regarded as an adequate characterization of the genus. In the same summary paper, Riley and Stutchbury also announced their new genus Palaeosaurus, but here the characterization of the genus is minimal and, of the species, non-existent. The second paper, published in 1837, concentrates mainly on the geology of the bone-bearing sediments, and adds nothing in the way of explaining what the new fossil reptiles might be. The full descriptive memoir (Riley and Stutchbury, 1840) was published three years later. This confirms that Thecodontosaurus was named from a right dentary (= main bone of the lower jaw) with 21 teeth, and further information was given on the two species of Palaeosaurus.
When Richard Owen named the new group Dinosauria in 1842, he did not include Thecodontosaurus. He only included Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus, and noted that they were all very large. Perhaps he thought that Thecodontosaurus, with its smallish jaw, could not possibly be a dinosaur; he classed it as an 'inferior or squamate saurian', with some resemblances to crocodilians, lizards, rhynchosaurs, and dinosaurs. It was only in 1870 that Thomas Huxley, Owen's great enemy, finally recognized that Thecodontosaurus was a dinosaur, and so it has been recognized ever since.
Another large contributor to Theco's history was a German palaeontologist, Friedrich von Huene. Huene named more dinosaurs in the early 20th century than anyone else in Europe. He was also the first to describe several higher taxons, including Prosauropoda and Sauropodomorpha .
 |
|
Samuel Stutchbury |
Dr Henry Riley and Mr Samuel Stutchbury began to excavate specimens of 'saurian animals' in autumn, 1834 in the limestone quarries of Durdham Down, Clifton, Bristol. These quarries are now largely infilled or built over. The first accounts of the new saurian remains were short announcements in 1834 and 1835 (Anon., 1834; Williams, 1835).
Henry Riley (1797-1848) was a local surgeon and medical school teacher who had been trained in Paris. He gave a successful series of lectures in Bristol, emphasising the works of Lamarck, Cuvier, and Geoffroy, and was a member of the important group of gentleman naturalists who founded the Bristol Institution in the 1820s.
Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859) began his professional career as an assistant at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Stutchbury was then employed as curator of the Bristol Institution in 1831, and served there until 1850 when he went to Australia as mineral surveyor for New South Wales.
Riley and Stutchbury read a paper about the new reptile finds to the Geological Society of London in March, 1836, and to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in Bristol later that year. The 1836 account is not illustrated, but it gives a full page of description of the new genus Thecodontosaurus, and indicates the repository of the jaw bone and other elements, in the Museum of the Bristol Institution, and can hence be regarded as an adequate characterization of the genus. In the same summary paper, Riley and Stutchbury also announced their new genus Palaeosaurus, but here the characterization of the genus is minimal and, of the species, non-existent. The second paper, published in 1837, concentrates mainly on the geology of the bone-bearing sediments, and adds nothing in the way of explaining what the new fossil reptiles might be. The full descriptive memoir (Riley and Stutchbury, 1840) was published three years later. This confirms that Thecodontosaurus was named from a right dentary (= main bone of the lower jaw) with 21 teeth, and further information was given on the two species of Palaeosaurus.
 |
|
Friedrich von Huene |
Another large contributor to Theco's history was a German palaeontologist, Friedrich von Huene. Huene named more dinosaurs in the early 20th century than anyone else in Europe. He was also the first to describe several higher taxons, including Prosauropoda and Sauropodomorpha .
