The Isle of Wight and its crucial role in the ‘invention’ of dinosaurs

Abstract

Dinosaurs were ‘invented’ in April 1842. Any history, before this, must separate periods of pre-history. The first covers the period before 1824 (when the first dinosaur genus Megalosaurus was described). Here the Isle of Wight discloses a forgotten pioneer in natural history, the stone mason/sculptor James Hay (c. 1748–1821) who may well have included, by 1818, such dino-to-be material in his remarkable Portsmouth museum. This was described on his death as ‘the best private collection in the kingdom’. Sadly, his material is lost, and no accurate diagnosis is possible. The second period extends from 1824 to 1842. The significant figure here is the Russia and East Indies merchant James Vine (1774–1837), who first revealed how Iguanodon bones occurred in abundance in the Island's south-west coastal outcrops. One, between September 1841 and April 1842, revealed to Richard Owen his long-sought fossil sacrum of an Iguanodon. This was in the private London museum of the political radical W. D. Saull (1783–1855). The discovery of this single fossil enabled Owen to ‘invent’ dinosaurs. He later wrote of this historic specimen how ‘the characters of the order Dinosauria were mainly founded on this specimen’. So, in a real sense, the Isle of Wight is the birthplace of Dinosaurs.

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