What Did People Think When They First Found Dinosaur Bones?

in the video today we're answering a viewer question because carrucha asks us who was the first person to figure out what dinosaur bones were just before you started though this video is made possible by brilliant brilliant belief that learning math science and computer science doesn't have to be dull to that end they put to get the courses that are all about storytelling interactive challenges and solving problems it's a hands-on approach that is a really excellent way to learn and currently they have over 50 interactive courses for example does this course on scientific thinking kind of relevant to today's video allowing you to get a solid foundation in physics well just doing some puzzles which is a great way to learn makes it a lot easier you'll get to understand the physics of mirror reflections laser tag who doesn't love laser tag and much more so effective learning is all about problem solving and brilliant help you learn and practice that it's just a great complement to videos just like this one I mean it's all good to learn something here but take it further with brilliance so if you want to support us which is wonderful and get unlimited access to all of brilliance in depth maths and science courses head on over to brilliant dork forward slash brain food to get 20% off their and your premium subscription again brilliant a talk forward slash brain food 20% off the annual subscription link below all right from around 250 to 66 million years ago various dinosaurs roamed the earth today the only dinosaurs left are birds which are cellular storia theropods funnily enough the same subgroup that Tyrannosaurus has belonged to think about that the next time you are enjoying a McDonough soar sandwich or scrambling up some dinosaur extra breakfast beyond their avian progeny all that mostly remains of these once dominant creatures are fossilized bones footprints and poo while many dinosaurs were actually quite small some were comparatively massive bringing us to the question of the hour and that's what did people think when they first pulled huge dinosaur bones out of the earth again with it's generally thought that humans have been discovering dinosaur bones about as long as we've been human egg and it appears that at least some of the giant creatures of ancient legend like beet stemmed from the discovery of dinosaur bones and fossils and the subsequent attempts of ancient peoples to explain what they were for example fourth century BC Chinese historian Chang reported the discovery of massive dragon bones in the region of will Chen at the time and including for many centuries after her including some still today the Chinese felt that these bones had potent healing powers resulting in many of them being ground down and drunk and special elixirs as for the exact medicine or purposes in the second century Shennong been charging states dragon bone mainly treats heart and abdominal demonic influx spiritual miasma and old ghosts it also treats cough and counter flow of Qi diarrhea and dysentery with pus and blood virginal discharge hardness and binding in the abdomen and fright epilepticus mainly treats epilepsy madness manic running about binding Qi below the heart inability to catch one's breath and various kinds of spasms it kills spiritual disruptors protracted taking may make the body light enable one to communicate with the spirit light and lengthen one's lifespan what fossilized bones may not actually make such an effective Kuril all things considered the classic depictions of dragons and our modern understanding of what certain dinosaurs look like are actually rather in the ballpark of accurate moving over to the ancient Greeks they are also believed to have stumbled across massive dinosaur bones and similarly assumes they came from long dead giant creatures in some cases seeming to think that they came from giant human-like creatures so moving on to better documented history in the 16th through 19th centuries the idea that the earth was only about six thousand years old was firmly entrenched in the Western world leading to these fossils creating a major puzzle for the scientists studying them even Meriwether Lewis of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition found a dinosaur bone in Billings Montana but in his case he decided it must have come from a massive fish which is a common way they were explained away given that no creatures that then walked the earth seemed to match up the various ideas thrown around during these centuries were described by Robert plot in his 1677 natural history of Oxfordshire other stones we find in the forms of shellfish be Lapidus ood generis fossils naturally produced by some extraordinary plastic virtue latent in the earth or quarries where they are found or do they rather oh they're form and figurations do the shells of the fishes they represent brought to the place they are now found by a deluge earthquake or some other such means and they're being filled with mud clay and petrifying juices have interactive time been turned into stones as we now find them still retaining the same shape in the hole with the same line Nations sutures Emin essences cavities orifices points that they had whilst there were shells bloggers on to explain the idea behind the plastic virtue hypothesis was that the fossils were some form of salt crystals that had by some unknown process formed and grown in the grounds and just so happened to resemble bones however plot argues against this then popular notion stating come we next to such stones as concern the members of the body amongst which I have one that has exactly the figure of the lowermost part of the thigh bone of a man or at least of some other animal a little above the sinus where it seems to have been broken off shoeing the marrow within of a shining spa-like substance of its true color and figure in the hollow of the bone after comparing the bone to an elephant's he decided it could not have come from one of them he instead concluded it remains that notwithstanding their extravagant magnitude they must have been the bones of men or women not off any thigh hinder but they may have been so provided it be clearly made out that there have been men and women of proportionable stature in all ages of the world down even to our own days thus much like his thoughts you have happens with certain ancient peoples he decided some of these bones must have come from giant humans of the past during plot ciara the Bible's mention of such giants was often put forth as evidence such as in numbers where it states the lands that we have gone through as spies is the lands that devours its inhabitants and all the people that we saw or in us are of great size there we saw the Nephilim and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers and so we seemed to them though the bone plot was describing has since been lost to history he left detailed drawings from which it's thought to have come from the lower part of the femur of a Megalosaurus literally a giant lizard but before it was called the Megalosaurus it had a rather more humorous name you see in 1763 a physician called Richard Brooks studying plots drawings dubbed it scrotum humanum because he thought it like a set of petrified testicles to be Claire Brooks knew it wasn't a fossil of a giant scrotum but nevertheless decided to damaged us because apparently men of all eras of human history can't help but make genital jokes at every opportunity well hilarious in the 20th century this posed a problem for the International Commission for zoological nomenclature when it eventually came time to formally classify the Megalosaurus as such the problem was of course that Brooks had named at first eventually the iczn decided that since nobody after Brooks had called it scrotum human and even though he was the first to name it that name could safely be deemed invalid that's Megalosaurus one out which is unfortunate because discussion of the rather large scrotum humanum would have provided great companion jokes to ones about uranus in science classes the world over moving swiftly on humanity continued to have a little clearer idea of what dinosaur bones were until william Buckland's work on the aforementioned Megalosaurus in 1824 as for the word dinosaur itself this wouldn't be coined until 1842 when British scientist Sir Richard Owen noted that the few dinosaur fossils that had been scientifically studied at that point all shared several characteristics for the curious those species were the Megalosaurus the highly acerous and the Iguanodon he further concluded that the fossils could not have come from any creatures that currently roams the earth and thus came up with a new name dinosaur meaning terrible powerful wondrous lizards of course it should be noted that despite being knighted for his life's work in 1883 Owen was renowned for stealing other people's ideas and calling them his own in at least one case even after having previously ridiculed the person he stole the ideas from that was paleontologist Gideon mantel in several instances Owen would attempt you take credit for some of Mantle's pioneering work on the Iguanodon while downplaying Mantle's contributions in the process to add insult to injury it is speculated that the much more distinguished owen actively worked to stop some of menthols work and papers from getting published to further illustrate Owens character and rivalry with Mansell after a near financial ruin in 1838 his wife leaving him in 1839 and his daughter dying in 1840 nan SEL would become crippled after a fall from a carriage on October the 11th 1841 previous to the accident she had frequently suffered from leg and back pain but the source of it was dismissed as likely due to the long hours of work that he put in and things like that think got worse when a coach he was on crash shortly before which meant L left RIT in the aftermath his former pain became extreme and ceased to be able to use his legs properly as he writes I cannot stoop or use any exertion without producing loss of sensation and power in the lower limbs and could I choose my destiny I would gladly leave this weary pilgrimage he later lumens in his journal my long probation of suffering will be terminated by a painful and lingering death okay so what does any of that have to do with Owen to add insult to injury after Mantell died from an opium overdose taken to help relieve some of his constant and extreme pain several obituaries were published of Manziel they were all glowing except for one this one was anonymously written though analyses of the writing style and general tone left few among the local scientific community with any doubt about who had written it Ennis Owen starts off praising Manziel stating on Wednesday evening last at the age of about 63 or 64 died the renowned geologist Gideon Hagen on Manziel it goes on to note how man tells memoir on the Iguanodon saw him the recipient of the prestigious raw medal of course later in the article Owen claims man tells work for which he won the medal was actually stolen from others including himself he states the history of the fossil reptile for the discovery of which dr. man tells name will be longest recollected in Sciences a remarkable instance of this few who have become acquainted with the Iguanodon by the perusal of the medals of creation would suspect that to caviar we owe the first recognition of its reptilian character to cliff - the first perception of the resemblance of its teeth to those of the iguana - Coneybear its name and to owen it's true affinities among reptiles and the correction of the error respecting its bills and alleged horn the article then goes on to outline dr. mental supposed various failings as a scientist such as his reluctance to the revelation of a truth when it dispossessed him of a petty illustration as well as accusing him once again of stealing other people's work stating touch lightly on other weaknesses of this enthusiastic diffuser of geological knowledge we must also notice that a consciousness of the intrinsic want of exact scientific and especially anatomical knowledge which compelled him privately to have recourse to those possessing it produced extreme susceptible any doubt expressed of the accuracy or originality of that which he advanced and in his popular summaries of geological facts he was too apt to forget the sources of information which he had acknowledged in his original memoirs it finally concludes as it started on a compliment dr. Menzel has however done much after his kind for the Advancement of geology and certainly more than any man living to bring it into attractive popular notice it's commonly stated from here that's out of spite oh and also had a piece of Mandel's - formed spine pickled and put on a shelf in the Hunterian Museum in London where Owen was the curator however while this was done the examination and study of the spine was done at the behest of mantle himself thus in autopsy was performed and an examination of mental spine showed that he had a rather severe and at least at the time peculiar case of scoliosis as to what was so interesting about this case one of the physicians involved dr. William Adam States it was discovered that the Severus degree of deformity of the spine may exist internally without the usual indications in respect of the deviation of the spinous processes externally in other words in other such cases it was clear that the spine was not straight from visual observation of the person's back where a curve could be observed mantle spine however exhibited severe scoliosis butts in such a way that upon external examination it otherwise appeared straight to Adams as knowledge such a thing had never been observed before but if Mansell had this particular brand of scoliosis surely many others did as well but the question now was how to detect it mulling over the problem inspired dr. Adams to come up with a method to make such a deformity visible with external examination thus giving the world's the Adams forward bend test which many a school students even today has no doubt recollections of being subjected to periodically going back to Owen as to why he seems to have hated man tells so much this isn't fully clear though it may simply have been man tells works sometimes resulted in showing Owens to be incorrect in various assumptions as well as jealousy of a scientist that he deemed inferior to himself or maybe it was just that Owens was a bit of a dick as noted by famed biologist thomas henry huxley it is astonishing with what an intense feeling of hatred Owen is regarded by the majority of his contemporaries with Mandal as arch hater the truth is Owen is the superior of most and does not conceal that he it must be confessed that he does some very ill-natured tricks now and then of course if you steal other people's work long enough eventually you're going to get caught especially when you're one of the world's leading scientists in your fields Owens misstep occurred when he was awarded the prestigious Royal medal from the Royal Society for his supposedly pioneering discovery and analysis of belem Knights which she called the vellum Knights o ni after himself and gave no credit to anyone else for the ideas in the paper it turns out however four years previously had attended a Geological Society get-together in which an amateur scientist by the name of Channing Pierce gave a lecture and published a paper on that very same creature while Owen was allowed to keep his medal even after it was revealed it's stone in the work of Peirce the rumors that had similarly borrowed other ideas without credit and this subsequent proof resulted in the loss of much of his former academic prestige things didn't improve over the following years and Owen was eventually given the boot from the Royal Society in 1862 despite his long and rather distinguished career while he would never again do any scientific work of significance his post plagiarist career did really proved to be a huge boon for those who enjoyed museums you see up until this point museums were not really places that were open to the public and to get access you usually needed to be an academic these were places for research not for random pleadians to just gawk at things after losing any shred of respect from his peers he eventually devoted his energies into his role as superintendent of the natural history department of the British Museum among other things as superintendent he pushed for and helped develop London's now famed Natural History Museum in London he also instituted a number of changes such as encouraging the general public to come and visit the museum at their leisure and devoted the majority of the displays for public use and at labels and descriptions added below each display explaining what each resolve so anybody not just the educated could understand what they were looking at etcetera many among the scientific community fought against these changes but he did them anyway giving us the modern idea of a museum in the process in any events after Owens Mantle's and their contemporaries work finally revealed these long extinct creatures for what they were interested in dinosaurs exploded resulting in what has come to be known as the bone wars between rival paleontologists in the 1890s which got so heated that some paleontologists literally resorted to mine's to be to their rivals to Discovery's the most famous Dutch rivals were off Neil Marsh of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale and Edward cope of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia while the pair started our friendly even choosing to name species after one another they eventually became bitter enemies and when they weren't doing everything in their power to find dinosaur bones as fast as possible they were writing and giving talks insulting each other's work they also made efforts to get each other's funding cancelled they stole discoveries from one another and whenever possible they tried to destroy the other's work in the ends the products of this rivalry was the discovery of a whopping 142 different dinosaur species and for the record Marsh discovered 286 cope 56 before ending any discussion of this Wild West of dinosaur bone hunting and scholarship would be remiss without noting the unsung hero of it all Mary Anning who is credited with finding many of the fossils used by the scientists for their discoveries like the long extinct Ixia saw Plesiosaurus in fact finding the first complete Plesiosaurus and the flying pterosaur Hanning was also noted to be popularly consulted by scientists the world over for her expertise and identifying types of dinosaurs from their bones and various insights she had on them with many world-renowned scientists actually choosing to make the journey to her little shop in person where she sold these bones in Dorset England's almost completely uneducated formally and having grown up relatively poor with her father dying when she was 11 an exec Spotty's came from literally a lifetime of practice as a family lived near the cliffs near Lyme Regis and from a little girl she helped dig out bones and sell them in a shop without access to formal scientific education she eventually took to dissecting many modern animals to learn more about Anatomy she also was an insatiable reader of every scientific paper she could get her hands on related to geology paleontology and animals in many cases unable to afford to buy copies of the papers should simply borrow them from others and then meticulously copy them herself with reportedly astounding exact replications of technical illustrations on that note Lady Harriet Sylvester would describe Anning in 1824 the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong she fixes the bones on a frame with some ends and then makes drawings and has them in graved it is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favor that this poor ignorant girl should be so blessed for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge is to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject and they all acknowledged that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom despite finding some of the best-known specimens of these creatures and risking her life on a daily basis during a hunt for fossils around the dangerous cliffs Anning got little public credit for our discoveries owing to a number of factors including that she was a woman from a dissenting religious sect against the Church of England's and otherwise as noted had no real formal education so it was quite easy for scientists to take any of her ideas that she had about the bones and claim them as their own discovery as Anning herself would lament the world has used me so unkindly I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone a companion of ours honor any would go on to state these men of learning have sucked her brains and made a great deal of publishing works of which she furnished the contents while she derives none of the advantages that said given the esteem she was regarded in by many scientists some of them did desire to be given credit for her contributions one such person like this was famed Swiss paleontologist Louis Agassiz's who was one of the many to visit anning's sharp to pick her brain about various things ultimately he credited her in his book studies of fossil fish further praising her work a few years later was an article than the Bristol mirror stating this persevering female has for years gone daily in search of fossil remains of importance at every tide for many miles under the hanging cliffs at Lyme who's fallen masses are her immediate objects as they alone contain these valuable relics of a former world which must be snatched at the moments of their fall at the continual risk of being crushed by the half suspended fragments they leave behind or be left to be destroyed by the returning tide to her exertions we own nearly all the fine specimens of Ixia sorai of the great collections of the dangers of a work Anning once wrote to a friend Charlotte Murchison in 1833 perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog is quite upset me the cliff that fell upon him and killed him in a moments before my eyes and close to my feet it was but a moment between me and the same fate beyond academic credits in lene stretch where anning's family was unable to find any new fossils and they're to start selling off all their worldly possessions just to eat and keep a roof over their heads one of their best customers leftenant Colonel Thomas James birch decided to auction off many of the bones he had bought from them and instead of keeping the money he gave it to Manning's family of this in a letter to Gideon Mansell birch stated the auction was for the benefit of the poor women who in truth found almost all the fine things which have been submitted to scientific investigation I may never again possess what I'm about to part with yet in doing it I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the money will be well applied he owns the approximately 400 pounds that this brought in about 48,000 pounds today this also significantly raised awareness among the scientific community of the family's contributions to this particular branch of science further when she lost her life savings apparently after being swindled by con men in 1835 the aforementioned William Buckland's managed to convince the British government since the British Association for the Advancement of science to give her a pension of 25 pounds per year about 3,000 pounds today in recognition of her works importance to science on top of this when she was dying of breast cancer in the 1840s and couldn't continue on in her workers before the Geological Society provided additional financial support to make sure she was taken care of after her death they also commemorated a stained glass window in 1850 in a memory with the inscription this window is sacred to the memory of Mary Anning of this parish who died ninth of March ad 1847 and is erected by the vicar and some members of the Geological Society of London in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology as also of her benevolence of heart and integrity of life the presidents of the Geological Society Henri de la beche would also write a eulogy for her which stated in part I cannot close this notice of our losses by death without adverting to that of one who though not placed among even the easier classes of society but one who had to earn her daily bread by her labor yet contributed by her talents and untiring researchers in no small degree to our knowledge this was the first eulogy for a woman the society had ever published and the first time such a eulogy had been given for a non fellow so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up bottom load don't forget to check out brilliant brilliant and org forward slash brain food and thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

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Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019