To most people born after 1920, the existence of dinosaurs is a given. Folks in our modern age don’t even question the fact that 300 million or so years ago, huge reptile-like beasts roamed around in a world devoid of humans. That Tyrannosaurus Rex and Brontosaurus once existed is as natural to us as the sun coming up, or rain falling from clouds.
Stop for a moment, though, and consider how downright bizarre the whole concept would have sounded to someone born in, say 1720. The only information most people at that time had about ancient animals came from the Bible or the works of classic Greek or Roman writers. And all those sources mention lions, tigers, bears and many other types of animals still very much in existence. It seemed logical to assume that if tigers existed in the time of the Old Testament, they’d always existed. If you could travel back to the 18th century and tell them that at one point, long in the past, gigantic, lizard-like creatures dozens of feet long roamed the earth, they’d probably burn you at the stake for witchcraft… and I can’t say that I’d blame them.
There was one thing that troubled people back then though, and that was the existence of fossils. At the time, most of the fossils people were familiar with were of ancient sea creatures like fish or bivalves. And what bothered the 18th century mind was why those fossils would turn up in the middle of the English countryside or high atop mountains deep in the heart of France.
Several schools of thought developed as “gentlemen scientists” investigated the matter further. Those investigations continued quietly on for some time, but the entire world seemed to turn upside down in 1811, when an uneducated young girl named Mary Anning found the remains of an ichthyosaur in Dorset, on the English coast. But rather than clearly making the case for the existence of dinosaurs, Annin’s fossil only made things even murkier. Since the fossil resembled a gigantic crocodile, the question wasn’t “what was this prehistoric beast?” but rather “what are the bones of a huge crocodile doing in England?”
Continue reading “The Tragic Fate of the Man Who Discovered Dinosaurs”
