Owen's Dinosaurs
The 19th century brought with it vast improvements in our understanding of palaeontology. Scientists like Georges Cuvier, Gideon Mantell and Richard Owen were making discoveries that called into question man’s origins and man’s importance, and with it banishing medieval concepts of Earth history.
At the turn of the 19th century, the French were leading the field of palaeontology. The New Republic had allowed for the creation of a national Museum of Natural History, unlike any other in its grandeur and rich collections. Its staff included Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilarie, and of course Georges Cuvier. In 1796, Cuvier had presented a paper ‘On the species of living and fossil elephants’ to the French scientific community that had proved beyond doubt that extinction (or progressionist evolution) had taken place. Later studies of Megatherium also backed this up, as did later intricate comparisons involving the fossilised bones of Eocene hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, deer, and so on. The key feature of Cuvier’s work was that it involved comparative anatomy between extant and fossil species, to a degree that had never been used before. The inherent secularism of the new French republic also helped to free its scientists from the constrains of reconciliation between new discoveries and biblical texts (which were at the time holding back British science). While Lamarck was arguing for the processes of organic flux, Cuvier insisted that species were stable, and had been affected by natural, if catastrophic, events that resulted in extinctions. He based this theory on the emerging science of stratigraphy, and the changes he could observe in Paris’ tertiary rocks, while seeing Lamarck’s ideas as lacking in evidence.
Robert Jameson translated Cuvier’s 1812 book, Researches on the fossil bones of quadrupeds, into English, he took the liberty of interpreting Cuvier’s extinction event as the biblical flood. This, while not pleasing to Cuvier, was rapturously received by the British scientific community. William Buckland found this idea particularly appealing, and as such produced his 1823 work, Relics of the Deluge. This won Buckland much respect in Britain, and his lectures at Oxford were as a whole very well attended.
Meanwhile, Cuvier was establishing an anatomical paradigm. The animal kingdom, he argued, was divisible into four kingdoms, between which anatomical comparison was unproductive (ie. Between molluscs and vertebrates). In Researches on fossil bones, he outlined these ideas, while also describing several ancient reptile species: mososaurs, pterodactyls and crocodilians. Another specimen, which he tentatively described as a crocodilian, later was revealed to be an ichthyosaur. These great beasts, unlike any known extant species, inspired geologists across the channel, such as William Coneybeare (who identified a plesiosaur) and perhaps more importantly, Gideon Mantell. Mantell was at the time attempting to gain support for his work on the Iguanodon. For many years, the scientific populace had dismissed his interpretation of some fossils in the Weald as belonging to an extinct herbivorous reptile. Many (including at first Cuvier) thought that the remains were instead from a hippopotamus, and that despite Mantell’s appeals to the contrary, they came from tertiary rock (bear in mind stratigraphy was in its infancy). It was not until 1824, when Mantell’s ideas finally won the backing of Georges Cuvier, that he could rise to any status in British geological circles with his new ‘Iguanodon’ species.
The fact that there seemed to be a clear pattern in the stratigraphies of fossilised remains (reptiles only- bar the Stonesfield mammal- in the secondary sequence; mammals in the tertiary sequence) gave progressionists like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ammunition. Saint-Hilaire was a neo-Lamarckian and argued that living species had “descended, by an uninterrupted path of generation” from fossil species. However, the key difference between his arguments and those of Lamarck himself was that he integrated Cuvier’s catastophes into the equation, suggesting they prompted progression and evolution. These ideas put Saint-Hilaire in fairly direct confrontation with the British scientists of the day, who were soon to find a spearhead in the form of Richard Owen.
By 1830, Cuvier’s ideas had become firmly established, and nowhere more strongly than in the mind of the young Richard Owen, who had the good fortune to be able to guide the ageing baron round the Hunterian museum. The professional relationship between Owen and Cuvier gave the former added gravitas and respect among the British scientific community. He had already risen to assistant curator at the Hunterian museum, and was becoming increasingly prominent at the zoological society. In 1831, Owen was presented with a rare Nautilus pompilius specimen, sent from Polynesia to the Hunterian Museum. He published a paper on the mollusc, largely focused on discrediting Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and his early evolutionist cohorts, and thus winning respect from the British scientific mainstream and above all Cuvier. Georges Cuvier, however, was rather occupied with the business of dying at this point in time: a stroke was to take his life in 1832. The global scientific community was in disarray with the loss of this leading light, and looked to find a ‘new Cuvier’. Owen, no doubt, fancied this title for himself, and was much maligned when Professor Robert Grant of the University of London was lauded as just this instead in Lancet (a journal of the time). Grant, not only being more influential, was also threatening to Owen as he was a Lamarckian evolutionist (and in fact worked with the young Charles Darwin).
To obtain more specimens and hence make further progress, Owen had joined the Zoological Society in 1830. Rather skilfully, he had by 1832 manoeuvred himself onto the council of the society using his apparently extensive social capacities. He succeeded in 1836 in vetoing Grant’s appointment to the council, starving him of specimens and effectively obliterating any opposition he had. He was to have ‘first dibs’ on all deceased animals in the London Zoo. By this time Owen had also been appointed ‘Hunterian Professor’ at the Royal College of Surgeons, ‘Professor of Comparative Anatomy’ at St. Bartholemew’s Hospital, and a Fellow of the Royal Society on the basis of several papers on monotremes, marsupials and ichthyosaurs. He was also married in 1835, allying him the extremely influential William Clift by virtue of his daughter’s hand.
It is around this point in time that Richard Owen began to take a more keen interest in the fossil reptiles that were being discussed by people like William Buckland, William Coneybeare, Gideon Mantell and the like. They could be used well in the debate against the early evolutionists, in that they showed a degree of complexity similar to that of modern animals, but lived before the age of mammals (flouting Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s view of progressionism).
In 1937, the British Academy for the Advancement of Science (with Owen’s father-in-law on the grant committee) commissioned Richard Owen (rather than the arguably more-suited Gideon Mantell, with whom Owen shared an often spiteful rivalry) to compile a ‘Report on the present state of Knowledge of the Fossil Reptiles of Great Britain’. During the course of his research for this, Owen met Mary Anning, and attempted to flatter her and exploit her wealth of knowledge. She took him on one of the surprisingly few fossil-finding excursions he ever went on.
Richard Owen presented his report to the BAAS in 1939, and much to the delight of his peers, used every opportunity to dismiss the French evolutionists. The BAAS were delighted, and promptly gave Owen another £200 to prepare a second instalment, to be focussed on land reptiles. This he did with great speed and aplomb, drawing on the collections of William Saull, George Holmes and of course Gideon Mantell (now in the British Museum). During the course of his research, he noticed that the tooth of the Iguanodon possessed an entirely different internal structure to that of its namesake, the Iguana. In fact, he noted, the reptile’s bones were more similar to those of modern herbivorous reptiles. When he presented his second report, he proposed the division of fossil reptiles in to four groups: the Crocodilians (many of which identified by Cuvier), the Enaliosaura (including Icthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs, originally grouped by William Conybeare), the Pterodactyls (flying lizards) and finally the Lacertians (including Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus, as originally grouped by Hermann von Meyer). He used this stage to state that fossil reptiles were just as advanced, if not more advanced, than modern animals, thus disproving progressionism. He also attempted to discredit his conceived rivals, slating Gideon Mantell’s comparison of Iguanodon and the Iguana, and claiming some of Mantell’s observations as if they were his own. Later redrafting of his report for publication regrouped the ‘Lacertians’ as ‘Dinosaurs’- more distant from the other clades of ancient reptiles. This assertion was based on the discovery of the fused sacrum that all dinosaurs shared, and on revised estimates on gait. It is worth noting, however, that he neglected to place Thecodontosaurus, Cetiosaurus, Streptospondylus, and Poikilopleuron in the dinosaurian clade, although they were indeed dinosaurs. He also neglected to note that Iguanodon’s forelimb was substantially less weighty than it’s rear-limb, as Mantell had seen- instead he imagined the dinosaurs to be lumbering quadrupeds. Nonetheless, this report was seen as masterful, and soon Richard Owen was gaining a reputation as the ‘English Cuvier’, moving in Royal circles. Meanwhile, Mantell was left furious and frustrated at his fairly new-found respect being hit by Owen’s venomous criticism.
Still more success came Owen’s way with his promotion to Joint-Conservator at the Hunterian Museum. His early prediction of the previous existence of large flightless birds in New Zealand (on the basis of a single bone) was also proven true as more Dinornis bones were found. While this proved his skill as an anatomist, it also gave weight to the idea there were several independent sites of creation (since they, along with many marsupials, were only ever found in New Zealand). This intrigued Owen, and soon he set about using homologies between species to compare all animals, suggesting that there was a sort of archetypal vertebrate on which all vertebrates were based. Note he was not inferring they evolved from a common ancestor, but instead that God bore the archetype in mind during creation. This idea gained a lot of support in Victorian scientific circles.
Not content with the level of respect he had though, it seems, Owen still attempted to thwart Gideon Mantell at every opportunity. It is said that he made sure that Mantell’s 1841 paper on the Iguanodon would be refused consideration for the Royal Medal. Meanwhile, his own paper on belemnites was nominated for the award, and later won (interestingly, Owen chaired the meeting of the Royal Society that resulted in his nomination). Controversy followed as it became clear that Mr. Chaning Pearce (an amateur palaeontologist) had already described the belemnite to the Geological Society four years previously- a meeting that Owen attended. Owen made no reference to this previous work, and indeed attempted to rename the creature. Many murmurs of discontent were heard, but it seems at this point in his career Richard Owen was largely viewed as unquestionable.
All the while, Owen’s rivalry with Gideon Mantell was going steady. Mantell had recently been awarded the Royal Medal, had highlighted Owen’s neglect of the Cetiosaurus (placing it finally in the clade Dinosauria), and described a new dinosaur- Colossosaurus. Richard Owen, meanwhile, took many illustrations from Mantell’s works for his attempted summary of British fossil reptiles and implied that they were his own (Owen was later forced into apologising for this). Indeed, it seems Richard Owen was falling out with people right, left and centre: Charles Lyell, Alexander Melville, Hugh Falconer, George Holmes (previously a staunch ally) and even the Queen’s dentist Alexander Naysmith all became victims of Owen’s antagonism. A young Thomas Huxley noted that ‘it [was] astonishing with what an intense hatred Owen [was] regarded by most of his contemporaries’. His apparent encouragement shown to Mrs. William Buckland in her decision to commit her husband to a lunatic asylum won him no friends either, it seems, as people were appalled at the treatment of such an influential scientist. This dislike, it seems, prevented Owen from gaining enough support among his contemporaries to succeed Charles Konig as Keeper of Mineralogy and Geology at the British Museum. The death of the great Gideon Mantell prompted further dislike: a dismissive and derogatory obituary was published in the Literary Gazette, with the scientific community guessing that Owen was the author. People were appalled at his lack of respect, saying the article ‘besp[oke] a lamentable coldness in the heart of the author’. Owen’s ‘pointed and repeated antagonism to Gideon Mantell’ was cited as the reason for his being denied the presidency of the Geological Society that year.
The next stage of Richard Owen’s career, however, would be one of his most ambitious project. The Crystal Palace Company approached him (having been declined by the dying Gideon Mantell) regarding the possibility of his creating lifesize reconstructions of his dinosaurs for a permanent exhibition. Owen without hesitation accepted the honour, and set about working with Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to complete his task. One famous image of the construction of this exhibition is ‘A Dinner Party in the Iguanodon’, depicting twenty one guests of high society dining in style inside the half-constructed belly of the Iguanodon. What is notable here is that Owen chose to portray the Iguanodon as quadrupedal, with a curious rhinocerine horn on its snout, ignoring Mantell’s observations on the forelimb’s much smaller size. When the exhibition finally opened on the 10th of June 1854, forty thousand spectators turned up to see Owen’s bizarre antediluvian beasts, kicking of a period of heightened public interest in natural history. www.commersen.se
The final stage of Richard Owen’s career was to fulfil one of his lifelong amibition: the construction of a dedicated Natural History Museum in Kensington. In his new position of ‘Superintendent of the Natural History Department’ at the British Museum (a post he was provided with in 1856), he submitted his plans to the treasury in 1859. He lobbied for a ten-acre site in central London, in which all species of higher animal could be displayed, including a ninety-foot whale gallery! It was to be the ‘best and noblest museum in the world’, to showcase God’s creation. Although Owen suffered some opposition from the up-and-coming Thomas Huxley, the Museum was indeed built. Owen was successful in his acquisition of funds, and much of what he requested was granted- even his whale gallery. Construction was to take decades, however, and in that time Science was moving fast.
The publication of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ (as it is so often abbreviated) in 1959 was a turning point in our understanding of natural history. Owen, who (it is said partly due to jealousy) reviewed the book extremely critically in 1860, became an obstacle to the spread of evolutionary thinking. In June 1860, a meeting of the BAAS saw a decisive clash between Owen and Thomas Huxley, in which was in effect a dispute between religion and naturalism. Huxley later disproved Owen’s theory that the human brain showed unique anatomical features all linked with the ‘service of the soul’, by proving there was nothing anatomically unique in the human brain. He spoke of Owen’s ‘baseless’ assertions and ‘grave errors’ that allowed for the needless propogation of ‘preposterous controversy’. In 1861, when Huxley was appointed to the Zoological Society Council, Richard Owen stepped down. Less than a year later, Huxley blocked Owen’s appointment to the Royal Society Council, just as Owen had disposed of Grant all those years before. Slowly, Owen’s dinosaurs were becoming Huxley’s, as his younger adversary made bold leaps forward. Huxley began to see the links between dinosaur and bird that Owen never suspected. The discovery of thirty-one skeletons of Iguanodon in Belgium in 1878 showed that far from being infallible, Richard Owen had been downright wrong about the shape of an Iguanodon. Discoveries by Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope were rapidly revealing an ancient fauna far larger and more diverse than Owen could ever have foreseen.
As Richard Owen became more and more seen as defunct, he clung to the Natural History Museum as his ‘main aim’. It became to Owen a testimony to his life’s work, in a time where many of his peers began to dismiss him. When construction was completed in 1880, he was an old widower pottering around his great cathedral to science. His son committed suicide in 1886, somewhat inexplicably, leaving Owen to live with his son’s family. When Owen himself died in 1892, he was largely recalled as a conservative curmudgeon, overtaken by the science he helped to establish. The late 1800s saw the emergence of a new stage in palaeontological understanding, with a solid foundation in Charles Darwin’s Evolutionary ideas.
See also - Gideon Mantell
Richard Owen
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Richard Owen
Gideon Mantell
Fig. 1. Crystal Palace Exhibition