Richard Owen’s Dinosauria in context: the rhetoric, politics and legacy of the dinosaurs

One of the most famous achievements of Richard Owen is his naming of the Dinosauria in 1842. During the Geological Society meeting of 1824, William Buckland (1784– 1856) described and named Megalosaurus, the first of three extinct reptiles that would make up the Dinosauria. The other two, Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodon, were discovered by Gideon Mantell (1790–1852). By combining the three genera together Owen sought not only to coin a new term but also to leverage the political power that claiming ownership over a taxonomic group could provide, with the goal in mind of creating a new museum icon to forward his plans for his ‘National Museum of Natural History’. After the term was coined, the concept of Dinosauria continued to be contentious amongst contemporary and modern paleontologists alike, its exact definition still not entirely solidified to this day.