The Changing Shape of a Dinosaur Owen's Dinosauria

In 1842 the anatomist Richard Owen attempted to bring order to the recent discoveries of prehistoric reptiles.   Owen grouped the three vanished genera - Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus together with the name Dinosauria ("terrible lizards").   The term 'dinosaur' was born.

Owen's representation of the Iguanodon, later constructed in concrete for the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1854 in the grounds of Sydenham Park, was of a creature standing on all fours looking more like a rhinoceros, and still having the spike on it's nose - a monstrous Victorian lizard-like creature.

Richard Owen's Dinosauria (1841): Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosurus emerging from the Dinosaur Quarry in Cuckfield, Sussex, with Owen's original restorations on the hillside.

Illustration from Samuel Griswold Goodrich's Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom 1859