section_path: History of study/Early dinosaur research
section_name: Early dinosaur research
paragraph_text: Early dinosaur research
  
  Scholarly descriptions of what would now be recognized as dinosaur bones first appeared in the late 17th century in England. Part of a bone, now known to have been the femur of a Megalosaurus, was recovered from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in 1676. The fragment was sent to Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and first curator of the Ashmolean Museum, who published a description in his The Natural History of Oxford-shire (1677). He correctly identified the bone as the lower extremity of the femur of a large animal, and recognized that it was too large to belong to any known species. He, therefore, concluded it to be the femur of a huge human, perhaps a Titan or another type of giant featured in legends. Edward Lhuyd, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, published Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (1699), the first scientific treatment of what would now be recognized as a dinosaur when he described and named a sauropod tooth, " Rutellum impicatum ", that had been found in Caswell, near Witney, Oxfordshire.
  
  Between 1815 and 1824, the Rev William Buckland, the first Reader of Geology at the University of Oxford, collected more fossilized bones of Megalosaurus and became the first person to describe a non-avian dinosaur in a scientific journal. The second non-avian dinosaur genus to be identified, Iguanodon, was according to legend discovered in 1822 by Mary Ann Mantell – the wife of English geologist Gideon Mantell who in fact had required remains years earlier. Gideon Mantell recognized similarities between his fossils and the bones of modern iguanas. He published his findings in 1825.
  
  The study of these "great fossil lizards" soon became of great interest to European and American scientists, and in 1842 the English paleontologist Sir Richard Owen coined the term "dinosaur", using it to refer to the "distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles" that were then being recognized in England and around the world. The term is derived from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinos) 'terrible, potent or fearfully great' and σαῦρος (sauros) 'lizard or reptile'. Though the taxonomic name has often been interpreted as a reference to dinosaurs' teeth, claws, and other fearsome characteristics, Owen intended it also to evoke their size and majesty. Owen recognized that the remains that had been found so far, Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus, shared distinctive features, and so decided to present them as a distinct taxonomic group. As clarified by British geologist and historian Hugh Torrens, Owen had given a presentation about fossil reptiles to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1841, but reports of the time show that Owen did not mention the word "dinosaur", nor recognize dinosaurs as a distinct group of reptiles in his address. He introduced the Dinosauria only in the revised text version of his talk published in April 1842. With the backing of Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, Owen established the Natural History Museum, London, to display the national collection of dinosaur fossils and other biological and geological exhibits.