Abstract

The history of English discoveries of dinosaurs is recounted, from Robert Plot's first illustration of a dinosaur bone in 1677 to the first formal scientific description and naming of a dinosaur genus by William Buckland in 1824. It is shown that the English discoveries were more numerous than recognized hitherto and that they amply predated the first finds in France and North America.

Though bones of other dinosaur groups were discovered, the majority of English finds were of carnosaur (probably megalosaur) bones and teeth. It is considered probable that all the various bones and teeth of Megalosaurus, obtained piecemeal from the Stonesfield Slate at Stonesfield, Oxfordshire over 125 years, were the remains of a single individual dinosaur.