Megalosaurus has a long and convoluted history of its discovery. It was the very first dinosaur to be named, by William Buckland, in 1824. However, remains of Megalosaurus had been discovered as far back as 1676. Nobody was quite sure what type of animal these bones belonged to, until the naturalist Georges Cuvier suggested to Buckland that they may have belonged to giant, lizard-like reptiles.
Early depictions of Megalosaurus are quite different from current scientific thinking. Buckland originally believed it was a four-legged amphibian, that spent time both in water and on land. A well-known statue of Megalosaurus was created under the supervision of early paleontologist Richard Owen in 1854. This statue shows a four-legged, humpbacked reptile. It is found in the Crystal Palace Park in London, along with other sculptures representing early thoughts on how dinosaurs looked.
Later, the four-legged view of large meat-eating dinosaurs would be challenged by new discoveries, and Megalosaurus was reimagined as a bipedal dinosaur.
Since then, other remains attributed to Megalosaurus have been discovered. However, it’s difficult to say with certainty that they all belong to the same genus of dinosaur. Thus, our overall picture of Megalosaurus remains frustratingly incomplete.
