Thomas Henry Huxley (b. 1825, d. 1895)
Thomas Huxley is perhaps not the sort of scientist one might associate with the Isle of Wight. His fame as a champion of Charles Darwin (he was often referred to as "Darwin's Bulldog"), and his skills as an anatomist and philosopher of natural history are well known. He was one of the first scientists to recognise the relationship between birds and dinosaurs. Perhaps some of this tremendous insight can be attributed in part to his study of the dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight, for in the same year, 1870, that he described Hypsilophodon foxi, he also published a paper in which he declared that ”the Dinosauria wonderfully approached......birds in their general structure, and, therefore,......these extinct reptiles were more closely related to birds than any which now live” (Huxley 1870, p. 18). This idea lost favour in the 1930's, but today, the notion of birds as dinosaurs has gained almost universal acceptance.
John Whitaker Hulke (b. 1830, d. 1895)
Dr John Whitaker Hulke was an achiever. Although his education began in Germany he eventually attended Kings College Medical School, London, where he attained his doctorate. Although a surgeon by profession, he had much wider interests. He was, for example, an accomplished botanist and student of Shakespeare. As a geologist and palaeontologist he achieved one of the greatest accolades of that profession by becoming President of the Geological Society of London in 1882. By 1890 he had become Foreign Secretary to Her Majesty's Government. In his few momentg of spare time he amassed a large collection of Wealden fossils, and it is possible that Hulke and the Rev. Fox may have collected together on the shores of the Isle of Wight. By the time of his death Hulke had written more than 50 palaeontological papers of which some 28 were devoted to dinosaurs. After his death his widow donated his extensive collection to the Natural History Museum, London.
Richard Lydekker (b. 1849, d. 1915)
Before Richard Lydekker became keeper of fossil reptiles at the British Museum of Natural History, London, he was with the Geological Survey of India, where he worked on fossil mammals from the Siwalik Hills. He joined the British Museum of Natural History in 1874 where one of his many achievements was to produce a catalogue of the fossil reptiles and amphibians held in the National collection: a work that ran to four volumes. This work was far more than just a list of specimens, as it provided a new classification of fossil reptiles and many specimens included were described for the very first time. Besides these volumes, in which he describes several new dinosaurs from the Isle of Wight, Lydekker also catalogued the fossil bird and mammal collections, and earned for himself the nickname of 'The Lightening Cataloguer' (Anon 1915). He wrote several popular books on extant mammals, a textbook on palaeontology and countless scientific papers describing new discoveries of fossil reptiles. Many of the latter works were important contributions to our knowledge of dinosaur anatomy. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1894 and was awarded the Geological Society's prestigious Lyell Medal in 1902.
Harry Govier Seeley (b. 1839, d. 1909)
A former student of Richard Owen, Harry Govier Seeley eventually became Professor of Geology at King's College, London. His background proved that, even in Victorian times, it was possible for a commoner to fight their way to recognition amongst the establishment and academic elite using intellect coupled with sheer hard work. Seeley devoted his life to the study of vertebrate fossils, especially to therapsids (a group of terrestrial vertebrates of the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic that were precursors to mammals) and pterosaurs. He wrote two books on pterosaurs, one of which < #150; Dragons of the air, published in 1901 < #150; was the first ever popular account of these flying reptiles. His fame as a student of dinosaurs was in recognising that dinosaurs could be divided into two groups, the Ornithischia and the Saurischia, distinguished on the basis of differences in the construction of the pelvis. Seeley was a prolific writer of scientific papers, and amongst more than 100 works are several papers on dinosaurs from the Isle of Wight. Seeley is credited with describing the Isle of Wight dinosaurs Ornithopsis, Ornithodesmus and Sphenospondylus, although the latter is now considered indeterminate.
In 1887 Seeley recognised that the so-called Isle of Wight crocodile Poekilopleuron pusillus was in fact a dinosaur and named it Aristosuchus pusillus.
