The History of Dinosaur Hunting

A doctor's wife found a bone by the side of the road in Cuckfield, West Sessex. This bone was a fossil tooth. The first one ever identified in the world. By the way, this was in 1822. This doctor, Gideon Mantell went on to search for other dinosaur bones. He became the first dinosaur hunter. He found and identified several bones.

Edward Hitchcock, professor of Geology at Amherst College in Massachusetts was shown a slab of rock containing footprints. This was in 1835. Most of these footprints were from Triassic dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were thought to be four-legged, but these footprints were from a two-legged creature. Therefore, they assumed the prints wee from birds. During that same year, proof of two-legged dinosaurs were found b Joseph Leidy.

Richard Owen noticed similarities between the Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosauus such as their vertebrate. They were therefore grouped as a suborder in the Saurian order called Dinosauria meaning "terrible lizard." A sculptor was paid to replicate the dinosaurs in concrete as full-sized in 1853. This was after the Great Exhibition of 1851. The replicas were placed in the Sydenham Park. In 1854, Hawkins presented a drawing of his restorations o the Society of Arts. The drawing along with his concrete replicas determined how dinosaurs were depicted for the next 25 years.

Richard Owens was in such agreement wit Hawkins view f the dinosaurs that he published a small picture of the replicas as a front pat to a publication he did in 1854.

In 1877, the Stegosaurus was discovered by Marsh. He went on to find other parts a year later. Soon he was able to complete a restoration of the dinosaur. In 1888, there was a discovery of a Triceratops skull. This discovery was made by John Bell Hatcher and named by Marsh. Hatcher went on to find over 30 skulls for Marsh. Triceratops was a new brand of dinosaur.

Barnum Brown discovered the first Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1902. There wasn't a complete skeleton at the time but there was enough to reconstruct. By 1915 a full skeleton was created. The T-rex was mounted in its fierce stance at the American Museum of natural History until 1993. The T-rex was then dismantled and reassembled to a modern day recollection of how it carried itself in prehistoric times. There was a discover in 1990 that was 41 feet long and a 20 percent complete fossil of a female T-rex was found in South Dakota. A possible ancestor to the T-rex was found in 2000 and was called Santana Raptor.

source: www.dinohunters.com