A Brief History of Fossil Hunting- How Strange Creatures from the Past Influenced Myths and Captured Imaginations

Travel to any natural history museum and you are bound to encounter a display of dinosaur bones.  Although many of the fossils and skeletons may be of more recent finds, the collecting and fascination over these fossilized remains goes back ages. 

It was in 1842 that the word "dinosaur" was coined by anatomist Richard Owen. And just 18 years earlier, in 1824, the first dinosaur was given the scientific name of Megalosaurus, meaning "great lizard".

But fossils had been discovered and theorized over long before then.

Let's travel backwards in time and look at the progression throughout history of man's understanding of what these strange objects were.

Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 71 CE- c.135 CE) left us a written account regarding the estate collections of Cesar Augusts. This famed ruler enjoyed flaunting his items of antiquity in his Capri vacation home. These large, fossilized bones on display for visitors, were represented as belonging to colossal sea monsters and wild beasts, or even the remains of giants.

Many of these fossils added a physical confirmation to the myths and legends that the Greek and Roman cultures were deeply immersed in.

For example, the nasal cavity in the center of a mammoth skull could quite easily be construed as the eye socket of a Cyclops.

The story of the Griffin guarding a hoard of gold was likely as a result of the fossilized remains of Protoceratops being discovered by Scythian miners as they passed through the Gobi desert.

In the centuries that followed, the philosophers of the day influenced the view of life on earth, both past and present and contributed to the understanding of what fossils were. The beliefs in myths and legends of prior eras were dismissed, and new theories of fossil formation were accepted. Some of these included the belief of spontaneous generation of organic and inorganic materials so that fossils were a creation of the surrounding stone.

During the Middle Ages, metaphysical ideas about life and the cosmos became influential in combining disparate ideas to explain the origins and functions of life on the planet.

At the same time, drastic misapplication of Biblical Scripture led to a belief in a creation period of only 6,000 literal years. Church influence and power greatly affected and controlled the scientific views of the masses for centuries, despite challenges to that faulty timeline.

With fossils not being correctly understood, and wide and varying ideas being populated regarding their formation, literature on the subject during this time period is scare and incomplete.

It is in the mid 1600's that we find a written record of fossil discussion from famed scientist Robert Hooke. He compared samples under a microscope of petrified wood with rotten wood samples, and marine shells with fossilized ones. He recognized them to be similar. He concluded that these remains belonged to extinct species and were preserved by some natural and geological process.

In 1676, we find the first published depiction of a dinosaur bone in Robert Plot's The Natural History of Oxfordshire. At the time, it was attributed to belonging to a giants thigh bone. In fact, it most likely belonged to Megalosaurus. 

Around this time, societies of scientific studies were created and a focus was directed to understanding the natural world, as seen through scientific advances of the day.

By the time the mid-1700's arrived, public museums in Europe and America were displaying large collections of fossils. At this time, dinosaur bones were now being attributed to giant, extinct lizards. Tusks and remains of mammoths were accurately being associated with extinct elephant species.  

The next century saw fossils being categorized by the influence of developing theories, such as those of Charles Darwin and contemporaries. 

This invigorated the interest in the natural world, and from the mid 1800's, we see a substantial increase in the search for fossils.  Universities and institutions were now funding research and expeditions across the globe.

It was then, in 1824, that British scientist Richard Owen cemented the understanding of dinosaur fossils. He recognized these as belonging, not to ancient lizards or crocodiles, but to an extinct group of reptiles that once roamed the earth.

This new group was aptly called Dinosauria-fearfully great lizards.

By the late 1800's dinosaurs were now being properly understood, with species like Triceratops and Iguanodon having been named.

Fossils no longer spurned stories of legendary, mythical creatures from lore. They were recognized for what they were conveying---a look into the past at what fascinating creatures inhabited our planet millions of years ago.