Dinosaur
At the turn of the 19th century, Britons would stroll along the Yorkshire Coast, stumbling across unfathomably big bones. These mysterious fossils were all but tumbling out of the cliffside, but people had no idea what to call them. There wasn\u2019t a name for this new class of creatures.\xa0\nUntil Richard Owen came along. Owen was an exceptionally talented naturalist, with over 600 scientific books and papers. But perhaps his most lasting claim to fame is that he gave these fossils a name: the dinosaurs. And then he went ahead and sabotaged his own good name by picking a fight with one of the world\u2019s most revered\xa0 scientists.\nWant to stay up to speed with\xa0Science Diction? Subscribe to our newsletter.\n\n\nWoodcut of the famous dinner inside of an Iguanodon shell at the Crystal Palace in 1854. Artist unknown.\n(Wikimedia Commons)\n\n\nFootnotes And Further Reading:\xa0\nSpecial thanks to Sean B. Carroll and the staff of the Natural History Museum in London. \nRead an article by Howard Markel on this same topic. \nCredits:\xa0\nScience Diction is written and produced by Johanna Mayer, with production and editing help from Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, with story editing help from Nathan Tobey. Our theme song and music are by Daniel Peterschmidt. This episode also featured music from Setuniman and The Greek Slave songs, used with permission from the open-source digital art history journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. We had fact-checking help from Michelle Harris, and mixing help from Kaitlyn Schwalje. Special thanks to the entire Science Friday staff.