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Where did modern paleontology, the science of studying dinosaur fossils, begin?
Question
#72879. Asked by skysmom65. (Dec 03 06 12:06 AM)
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Arpeggionist
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In England. Specifically in London at the home of Gideon Mantell, whose wife found a tooth that she thought would be of interest to him. (He recognized that the tooth belonged to a species he'd never seen before, and named the creature the iguanadon.)
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zbeckabee
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Danish geologist and anatomist Neils Stensen (1638-1686) - commonly known as Nicolaus Steno - was among the first naturalists to discern the true nature of glossopetrae.
...Although the shark's head was badly desiccated and many of the teeth were missing, Stensen dissected the jaws, eye, and ear, describing these structures in detail in a report published in 1667.
...And that's the story of how glossopetrae and the head of a Great White Shark played a pivotal role in launching the modern sciences of both geology and paleontology. Not bad for a 'fallen' amulet!
 http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/evolution/glossopetrae.htm
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Arpeggionist
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Caspar Wistar of Philadelphia was the first to describe in a scientific paper the bones of an ancient animal he called the great American "incognitum". As it happened, the bones he used to assemble the model of a speciman came from various other animals, some modern, some not. When a truly bizzare looking skeleton was sent to France, an anatonist by the name of Cuvier coined the term "mastadon", meaning "nipple teeth".
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Arpeggionist
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Wistar discovered the bones in 1787.
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