Richard Owen (b. 1804, d. 1892)
Richard Owen invented the term Dinosauria. This he did in 1842 when he published the text of a lecture he gave for the British Association for the Advancement of Science one year earlier in Plymouth. He used the term, meaning 'fearfully great lizards' in Owen's translation, to encompass three previously described taxa; Megalosaurus, a theropod from the Jurassic of Oxfordshire described by Buckland (1824), and two of Gideon Mantell's monsters, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus from the Weald of Sussex. Owen was a great comparative anatomist and described several new dinosaurs himself, including the first sauropod ever to be described, Cetiosaurus, also from the Jurassic of Oxfordshire (Qwen thought this was a giant crocodile), and Scelidosaurus harrisoni, an armoured ornithischian from the Lower Jurassic of Dorset.
Owen was instrumental in establishing the British Museum of Natural History at South Kensington, now the Natural History Museum, London. He is known to have visited the Reverend W. D. Fox on the Isle of Wight on at least one occasion, and perhaps even went to the shore to collect fossils with him. Records of correspondence between Richard Owen and the Reverend Fox (see below) clearly show the high regard that Fox had for Owen. Much of the correspondence between the two relates to Fox's tales of new discoveries of dinosaur bones and are useful sources regarding locality details and context of discovery. Letters of a more serious nature show that Fox felt that his position as curate of Brixton (now spelled Brighstone) on the Isle of Wight was under threat. Fox wrote at least two letters to Owen pleading for support to remain in his post (see Blows 1983), pointing out the valuable contributions he had made to scientific discovery while based on the Island. Fox remained on the Isle of Wight until his death, so perhaps Owen did indeed have a word in the right ear.
Owen named a number of Isle of Wight dinosaurs including Polacanthus foxii Poekilopleuron pusillus (= Aristosuchus pusillus).
Reverend William D. Fox (b. 1813, d. 1881)
The Reverend W. D. Fox, born in Cumberland, the son of a yeoman farmer, never married. He was an avid collector of Isle of Wight fossils and is famous for discovering several new dinosaurs, including Calamospondylus, Aristosuchus, Hypsilophodon and Polacanthus. Many of these dinosaurs were eventually named in honour of him. Fox arrived on the Isle of Wight, taking up the curate's post at Brixton (now Brightstone), in 1862, aged 43. He kept company with such eminent scientists as John Hulke, Richard Owen and perhaps even Charles Darwin and was a friend and acquaintance of the famous English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Living as he did in Brighstone, Fox had easy access to the cliffs and foreshore of the southwest coast where, in the last century, the collecting grounds were a prolific source of dinosaur fossils. We may imagine Fox in his pulpit, requesting the strong arms of his parishoners to help him remove his latest dinosaur discovery from the crumbling cliffs. Mrs McAll, wife of the vicar of Brighstone, said of Fox < #148;It was always the bones first and the parish next”.
His large collection of more than 500 specimens, valued at 300 guineas, was acquired by the Trustees for the British Museum of Natural History, London, in 1882, where it is still housed and is.the focus of many scientific studies on dinosaur anatomy and biology. For an account of the Reverend Fox and his relationship with the Victorian scientific elite see the biography by Blows (1983).
Although Fox was not a professional scientist, and could be regarded as an amateur collector, his impact on the study and discovery of British dinosaurs is almost unparalleled. He rarely attempted to write about his discoveries, prefemng to leave that to those he regarded as experts, although on occasion he did submit notes to magazines and the occasional scientific meeting (e.g. Fox 1865, 1869, Fox in Anon. 1866a, b). In many ways Fox symbolises the crucial role that amateur fossil collectors have played, and still play, in our understanding of ancient life on Earth. Fox probably discovered more species of dinosaur than anyone else in the UK, and also has more dinosaurs named after him than any other Englishman.
Samuel Husbands Beckles (b. 1814, d. 1890)
Samuel H. Beckles is more famous for his work on the dinosaur fossils from the Weald of Sussex than for his discoveries on the Isle of Wight. However, his experiences in Sussex served him well on his few jaunts to the Island, for Beckles was the first person to recognise the presence of dinosaur footprints on the Isle of Wight (Beckles 1862). He also discovered articulated dinosaur material.
Samuel Beckles was a lawyer born in Barbados. He retired to St Leonards on Sea, Sussex, in 1845 where he devoted his time to collecting fossils and the study of Wealden Geology (Woodhams 1990). Although not a trained scientist, Beckles' contribution to palaeontology and geology was acknowledged when, in 1859, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. Beckles was a good friend of Richard Owen, who described and illustrated several of Beckles' more important discoveries in his monographs. His large collection of fossils was mostly transferred to the Natural History Museum in London on his death, although some material, though lacking documentation, is thought to be held in the Hastings Museum. His greatest contributions were his discoveries of exceptional finds of Iguanodon bones. Beckles also found the remains of new dinosaurs, although some of these, such as the theropod now called Becklespinax altispinax, were not recognised as representing new genera until long after his death (Huene 1923, see also Paul 1988, Olshevsky 1991).
