I want you to close your eyes for just a second.
Oh, we're doing a visualization exercise. Yeah,
yeah. Just go with me here. I want you to imagine
that you are a scientist, but it's the early
19th century. OK. Mutton chops the whole nine
yards. Exactly. And you're standing in this incredibly
muddy quarry somewhere in the English countryside.
Your hands are just completely raw from chipping
away at this ancient unyielding stone. Right.
You're using tools that by today's standards,
I mean, they're basically just primitive pickaxes.
Pretty much. And then suddenly your tool hits
something completely different, not rock, bone.
So you clear away the dirt. and the centuries
of debris, and you manage to haul out this massive,
unbelievably heavy, totally bizarre piece of
fossilized moan. A monumental discovery. But
here's the kicker. You hold it up, you wipe the
sweat off your forehead, and you realize you
have absolutely no idea what you are looking
at. I mean, none. Yeah, you're holding a piece
of this ancient puzzle, but the frustrating part
is that nobody's ever seen the picture on the
front of the box. Exactly. It's a profound sort
of blindness. It really is. I mean, at that point
in history, the very concept of a dinosaur, that
word hadn't even be fully articulated yet. You
are literally trying to comprehend an animal
that defies everything you currently know about.
Biology and that sense of profound mystery that
complete shot in the dark. That is exactly where
we're starting today. This is a good one We are
going to trace the story of one specific creature,
a genus of early Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur,
known as Ornithopsis. And I'll tell you right
now, we are not just going to list off a bunch
of dry, boring facts about dinosaur bones. No,
we are getting into the mud on this one. OK,
let's unpack this. We are going to outline the
mission here, which is to trace the incredibly
complex, highly dramatic, and honestly sometimes
just deeply petty history of how this one dinosaur
was discovered, named... renamed and fought over
by scientists for literally over a century. Massive
egos, bitter academic rivalries, aggressive renaming
campaigns, it's got it all. But before we get
into the 19th century academic flame wars, I
think we need a solid anchor. Good idea. For
you listening, we need to know what the modern
scientific consensus actually is. So if we look
at ornithopsis through the lens of 21st century
paleontology, what exactly are we dealing with?
Let's set the baseline. Well. When we look at
the surviving evidence today, we classify ornithopsis
as an extinct genus of titanosauriform. Okay,
titanosauriform. Break that down for us. Sure.
To visualize that, you need to picture the classic
sauropod body plan. You know, the massive four
-legged giants with the long necks and the long
tails. Like a brachiosaurus. Exactly like a brachiosaurus.
The titanosauriforms were a remarkably successful,
globally widespread subgroup of these giants.
And ornithopsis. It was not a small animal. How
big are we talking? Based on comparisons with
more complete relatives, like the famous giraffe
and titan, we estimate that the type specimen
of ornithopsis belonged to a creature that was
roughly 16 to 18 meters in length. Wait, 16 to
18 meters? That is, I mean, what is that in feet,
like 50 to 60 feet long? Yep, 52 to 59 feet is
a good estimate. You are talking about an animal
the exact size of a bowling lane. A very heavy
bowling lane. Just walking around early Cretaceous
Europe. Precisely. You would be looking at an
animal that could comfortably peer over a three
-story building. But, and here's the critical
caveat, and honestly, it's the engine that drives
all the historical drama we're about to discuss.
Our entire modern understanding of this colossal
animal is based on extremely fragmentary remains.
Right. We don't have the whole thing. Not even
close. We do not have a beautiful, pristine,
fully articulated skeleton sitting in a museum
hall somewhere. We have pieces. Fragments. Just
individual bones that have been subjected to
intense, almost obsessive scrutiny. In the name
itself, ornithopsis, that feels like a very specific
choice. What does that actually translate to?
The name is the absolute crux of the entire controversy.
Ornithopsis comes from Greek, ornus means bird,
and opsus means likeness. Bird likeness. Yeah.
Bird likeness. It is a heavy, massive dinosaur
that was named for looking like a bird. And currently,
the only species within this genus that modern
science widely accepts as valid is Ornithopsis
holkei. Which just seems like an incredible contradiction.
A 60 -foot earth -shaking reptile being named
for its bird -likeness. That's totally counterintuitive.
And that contradiction is exactly why this story
is so important for you here. This isn't just
a biology lesson. It is a master class in how
science actually works in the real world. Absolutely.
We so often get taught that science is this clean,
objective march toward the truth. You know, hypothesis,
test, fact. But the story of ornithopsis shows
that science is messy. It's full of blunders.
Blunders, personal biases, huge leaps of logic.
So let's go back to the very beginning. Let's
look at the first blunder. Take us to 1833. Who
is finding the first piece of this puzzle? So
the story begins with a man named Gideon Algernon
Mantel. Mantel, a pretty famous name in the field.
Very famous. He was a prominent figure in early
paleontology, though he was originally a medical
doctor. And in 1833, he was studying fossils
that had been pulled from the Tilgit forest.
Which is part of the Wieldon formation in Southeast
England, right? Correct. And the Wieldon formation
is a pretty big deal in the dinosaur world. Oh,
it's foundational. The Wieldon formation is this
incredible sequence of sedimentary rocks that
perfectly captures the terrestrial and freshwater
environments of the early Cretaceous period.
It is essentially the cradle of British dinosaur
paleontology. So Mantell is looking through the
material recovered covered from these rocks.
Yeah, and he isolates a very specific fragmented
bone. For those who like to track the museum
catalog, Ringo, you're out there. This piece
would eventually be purchased by the British
Museum in 1838 and cataloged as specimen R2239.
OK, so Mantel has this giant stony fragment on
his desk. He has to call it something. What does
he decide he's holding? He concludes that he
is holding a piece of an iguanodon. Specifically,
he believes it is the quadrate bone. The quadrate.
That's a skull bone, right? Yes. The quadrate
is a crucial part of the skull. It forms the
actual joint that connects the lower jaw to the
rest of the skull. Okay. I'm really trying to
wrap my head around this. How does a medical
doctor, someone who literally studies anatomy
for a living, pick up a bone from a 50 -foot
long -necked dinosaur and say, Uh huh, yes. This
is clearly the jaw joint of an entirely different
animal. What's fascinating here is that you really
have to put yourself in his shoes. You know,
you have to remember the extreme limitations
of his era. Because it's 1833. Exactly. The word
dinosaur hadn't even been invented yet. The concept
of an entirely extinct group of giant, de -voosed
terrestrial reptiles simply wasn't established.
Right. What Mantel did know, for a fact, was
that there was a large herbivorous reptile in
that exact geological area. And he knew this
because he and his wife had previously found
fossilized teeth belonging to a creature he named
Iguanodon. Right, Iguanodon. Because the teeth
looked exactly like a modern iguana, just scaled
up to monstrous proportions. Spot on. So his
logic goes like this. He knows Iguanodon is in
the wielding formation. Now he finds another
massive, bizarre reptilian bone nearby. He looks
closely at this new bone and notices it has these
deep cavities, these hollowed out spaces inside
the bone structure. Mantell misinterprets these
spaces. He thinks they are what anatomists call
a tympanic cavity. Like the tympanic membrane,
the ear? Exactly, the hollow space in the skull
that houses the middle ear. Ah, okay. I see where
he's going. So his logic is it has an ear cavity,
therefore it has to be a skull bone. And if it's
a giant skull bone found in the same forest as
giant iguanodon teeth. It must be the jaw joint
of an iguanodon. It's wrong, but it's a very
logical kind of wrong. It is an entirely rational
hypothesis based on an incredibly limited data
set. I mean, he was trying to fit an unknown
piece into the only puzzle he knew existed. Right.
But of course, science doesn't just let hypotheses
sit unchallenged forever. And this is where the
scrutiny begins. The plot pickings. We jump forward
about 20 years to 1854, and one of the most towering,
honestly intimidating figures of Victorian science
enters the narrative. Richard Owen. Sort of Richard
Owen? Richard Owen, the man who actually coined
the word dinosaur. He decides to take a look
at Mantell's supposed jawbone. Owen was a brilliant,
highly rigorous comparative anatomist. He looks
at specimen R2239, he reads Mantell's description,
and he applies a much stricter standard of evidence.
He wasn't one to just agree to be polite. Definitely
not. Owen says essentially, Mantell, your anatomical
interpretation isn't impossible. It could theoretically
be a quadrate bone. But then Owen points out
a massive fundamental flaw in Mantell's logic
regarding what animal it actually belonged to.
Because they didn't actually find the bone next
to the teeth. Precisely. This is such a vital
moment in the development of paleontological
methodology. Owen introduces the strict requirement
of direct association. The smoking gun. Right.
He notes that this bone was found isolated. It
was not articulated with an iguanodon skull,
nor was it found lying directly next to definitive
iguanodon teeth. And without that smoking gun,
Owen basically says, we can't just assume they
go together just because they lived in the same
zip code. Correct. Owen argues that the early
Cretaceous ecosystem of the Wealdon formation
was likely complex and diverse. It wasn't just
a Gwandodon walking around out there. So what
did Owen think it was? Owen suggests alternatives.
He says, since we don't have direct association,
this bone might just as easily belong to another
massive reptile we know from the era. like Streptospondylus,
or perhaps Idiosaurus. Idiosaurus. A massive
crocodile -like marine reptile. Or at least,
so they thought at the time. It is such a great
example of the scientific method in action, though.
Owen is pulling back on the reins of assumption.
He is introducing doubt where Mantell had certainty.
It's good science. But the incredible irony here
is that while Owen is being so incredibly careful
about which animal it belongs to, both he and
Mantell are still completely spectacularly wrong
about what part of the body they are even looking
at. Completely wrong. They are having this high
-level serious academic debate about whose jaw
joint it is, and it isn't a jaw joint at all.
Not even close. Which brings us to a major paradigm
shift. For decades, this bone just sits in the
literature as a questionable skull fragment.
It takes fresh eyes and a completely different
specimen to finally crack the code. And this
is where the story truly explodes. We move to
the year 1870. Enter a scientist named Harry
Govier Seeley. Sealy is a key player here. Now
Sealy isn't looking at Mantell's original bone
from the Tilgit forest. He is looking at a new
but strikingly similar specimen that was found
on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is another
incredibly rich fossil locality just off the
south coast of England. It features the exact
same early Cretaceous deposits as the mainland
wielding formation. So it's a sister site, essentially.
Basically, yes. The British Museum had actually
purchased this particular specimen back in 1853,
again from Mantell's expansive collection. But
it had just been sitting there in a drawer until
Seeley finally gave it a thorough rigorous examination
in 1870. It was cataloged as NHMUK PVR 28632.
OK, so Seeley puts this massive rock on his desk.
He compares it to the drawings and descriptions
of the first bone, and he has an absolute eureka
moment. What does Seeley see that Mantell and
Owen completely missed? Seeley possesses a very
different perspective on comparative anatomy.
He looks at this aisle of white specimen and
he immediately realizes they are not looking
at the jaw. They are not looking at the skull
at all. What are they looking at? These massive,
heavy block -like bones are vertebrae. They are
the individual segments that make up the spinal
column of a gigantic animal. That is a massive
course correction, from the head all the way
down to the back. It changes everything about
how you orient the fossil. But it goes deeper
than just moving from the head to the back, right?
Seeley also solves the mystery of the ear cavities
that confuse Mantell. Yes, and this is where
Seeley's genius truly shines. Remember Mantell's
tympanic cavities, the spaces he thought housed
the middle ear. Right, the ear holes. Seeley
looks at those exact same indentations and hollows,
but because he knows he is looking at a vertebra,
specifically the centrum, which is the solid,
cylindrical main body of the vertebra, he realizes
those openings aren't for hearing. They are entry
points. Entry points for what? Entry points for
a complex system of air sacs. Seeley realizes
that the bone is not solid. It has been invaded
by pneumatic cavities. The massive vertebra is
essentially hollowed out from the inside. Here's
where it gets really interesting. I really want
to make sure you listen and grasp the magnitude
of this discovery. When paleontologists say the
bone is pneumatized or filled with cavities,
don't just picture a hollow plastic straw. No,
no. Think of the internal structure of a modern
commercial airplane wing. Or think of a dense,
intricate honeycomb. It is a highly complex web
of bony struts and incredibly thin walls. Nature's
engineering. Exactly. It is an engineering marvel
designed to maintain immense structural strength
and hold literal tons of weight while being composed
mostly of empty air. And Seeley looks at this
ancient, supposedly primitive reptile and sees
this advanced engineering. It was an astonishing
revelation. Because in 1870, there were only
a few places in the animal kingdom where anatomists
had seen that specific type of internal weight
-saving architecture. Where? In the bones of
flying reptiles, the pterosaurs, and in the bones
of modern birds. Which explains the name. This
is why Seeley names his 1870 paper and the new
genus Ornithopsis bird -likeness. Exactly. He
names the species Ornithopsis hulkii to honor
his colleague John Whitaker Hulk. But Seeley
doesn't just stop at a cool name. He actually
takes a massive, incredibly bold theoretical
swing based on this hollow bone. He does. Seeley
looks at the pneumaticity, the bird -like air
sacs invading the spine of this terrestrial giant,
and he proposes a wild evolutionary hypothesis.
He suggests that ornithopsis might represent
A transitional link. A transitional link. He
theorizes it's a bridge between the flying pterosaurs
and modern birds, and that it is allied with
the dinosaurs. I mean, imagine dropping that
theory into a Victorian academic society. It
would not go over well. You have these scientists
who are entirely accustomed to viewing ancient
reptiles as sluggish, heavy, solid -boned, swamp
-dwelling monsters. And Seeley stands up. points
to a bone the size of a tree trunk and says,
actually, gentlemen, its spine is built exactly
like a sparrows. It's an evolutionary stepping
stone. It completely upends the established worldview.
It was a brilliant, incredibly forward thinking
piece of anatomical deduction. But as you alluded
to, it was deeply unpopular with certain factions
of the scientific establishment, suggesting that
a massive earthbound reptile shared such an intimate,
sophisticated anatomical connection with birds.
It was a bridge too far for many. And nobody
hated a bridge too far more than Richard Owen.
Oh, Owen was furious. Which brings us to the
Great Retaliation. Let's look at the years 1875
to 1876. It is really important to understand
Richard Owen's position at this time. He was
not just a scientist, he was an institution.
Right, he was superintendent of the natural history
departments of the British Museum. Yes, he wielded
immense influence over how both the public and
the academic world understood these extinct creatures.
And he was notoriously territorial and often
staunchly opposed to the emerging evolutionary
theories of Darwin and his contemporaries like
Seeley. So it's 1875. Owen has had five years
to stew over Seeley's ornithopsis paper, five
years of letting it bother him. Owen decides
to revisit the fossils himself. Time to set the
record straight in his mind. Right. He publishes
a new assessment. Now, Owen isn't foolish. He
does concede one major point to Seeley. He looks
at the bones and admits, okay, fine, they are
vertebrae. Mantell and I were wrong about the
jaw joint. Which is big of him, I suppose. But
that is the absolute limit of Owen's graciousness.
Oh, absolutely. Owen violently rejects the biological
implications of Seeley's work. He outright refuses
to accept the bird connection. So how does he
explain the hollow bones? Owen looks at the extreme
hollowing of the vertebrae, the very feature
that defines the specimen, and he essentially
dismisses it. He argues that this bone is much
closer to a different genus of dinosaur that
he, Richard Owen, had recently discovered and
named. Both of you are spondylists. Of course.
It has to be related to his discovery. Let's
track the academic pettiness here, because it
is just staggering. Owen decides that since Seeley's
evolutionary theory is wrong, Seeley's name for
the dinosaur must also be completely eradicated.
The total scorched earth policy. Owen starts
a massive renaming campaign. He looks at Mantell's
original bone from the 1830s, the one he looked
at in 1854, and he officially names it Botryospondylus
elongatus. He brings it into his own newly created
genus. And then he turns his sights on the Isle
of specimen, the exact specimen that Seeley had
formally named Ornithopsis holkei five years
prior. Bowen completely ignores Seeley's established
name. He looks the Isle of Wight vertebrae and
declares its new name is Botryospondylus magnus.
It's astounding. He even gives them two different
species names, Elongatus and Magnus, refusing
to admit the two bones belong to the same type
of animal. This is a blatant violation of the
rules of scientific nomenclature, even as they
existed then. The principle of priority dictates
that the first formally published, validly described
name for an organism is the one that stands.
Seeley's ornithopsis, Hulki, had clear priority.
So how does Owen justify steamrolling over the
rules? I mean, he's the head of the museum. He
justifies it through sheer authority and personal
disbelief. Owen wrote a scathing critique where
he explicitly attacked the very premise of Seeley's
name. Because Owen refused to believe that the
vertebrae of these massive dinosaurs were open
and lightly constructed like a bird's, he declared
that the name ornithopsis bird likeness was,
and I quote, glaringly false. Glaringly false.
He is literally saying, because I personally
do not believe your anatomical theory, your validly
published scientific name is a lie and therefore
I am legally allowed to rename it after myself.
It is breathtaking arrogance. It is the ultimate
flex of institutional power. Owen is trying to
rewrite the scientific record to align with his
own philosophical view of what a dinosaur should
be. And the saga doesn't even stop there, right?
In 1876, just one year later, Owen changes his
mind again about the Isle of White Specimen.
Wait for it. The one he just named Bothreospondylus
magnus. Yes. He decides it doesn't belong in
Bothreospondylus anymore. You have got to be
kidding. He creates yet another genus. chondrostiosaurus,
based on some different wielding fossils. And
he arbitrarily moves Sealy's specimen into this
new genus, renaming it chondrostiosaurus magnus.
So let me get this straight. Within a span of
six years, the single hollowed out piece of spine
has been called Ornithopsis hulkii by Sealy,
then Bothrius bondilus magnus by Owen, and then
chondrostiosaurus magnus by Owen again. Yeah.
If you are a paleontologist trying to research
this animal in the 1870s, you are pulling your
hair out. It is a completely artificial taxonomic
crisis created entirely by one man's ego. It
perfectly illustrates that taxonomy is not merely
a sterile filing system. It is a battlefield.
It is heavily influenced by the personalities,
the rivalries, and the theoretical biases of
the people holding the pen. Owen used his immense
prestige to try and bury a genuinely brilliant
anatomical insight simply by throwing a mountain
of new invalid Latin names on top of it. But
history and science usually have a way of catching
up to the truth. Owen's aggressive renaming campaign
couldn't hide the physical reality of the bones
forever. Which brings us to the cleanup crew.
Let's move to 1879 and talk about a man named
John Whittaker Hulke. Ah, John Whittaker Hulke.
He's a fascinating figure. He was a highly respected
surgeon and a paleontologist. And importantly,
he is the very man that Harry Seeley honored
when he coined the species name Ornithopsis hulkei.
So Hulke clearly has a vested interest in this
fight. It's his name on the line, too. Exactly.
He steps into the ring to sort out the absolute
mess Owen made of the wheeled and sauropod fossils.
What is Hulke's approach here? Hulk takes a methodical,
purely anatomical approach. He doesn't get into
the philosophical weeds. He sits down with all
the material, Mantell's bone, Seeley's bone,
Owen's new specimens, and he systematically dismantles
Owen's arguments. First and foremost, Hulk publicly
defends Seeley against the charge that the name
Ornithopsis was glaringly false. How does he
prove Owen wrong? Does he argue the evolutionary
theory? No, he doesn't even need to touch the
evolutionary theory. Ulk simply points to the
physical rock sitting on the table. The evidence.
Yes. He points out that regardless of whether
you believe this animal is related to birds,
pterosaurs, or is just a weird, unique dinosaur,
the physical, undeniable reality is that the
bone is deeply hollowed out. It is lightly constructed.
You can literally see the holes in it. Right.
The internal camellia, the air chambers, are
physically present. Therefore, Seeley's descriptive
observation was perfectly accurate, and Owen's
claim that it was false was entirely baseless.
So Hulk completely validates Seeley science,
and by doing so, he triggers the strict rules
of taxonomy to deal with Owen's invented names.
Exactly. This introduces a really important concept
in taxonomy, junior objective synonyms. Okay,
for anyone listening who isn't a museum curator,
walk us through how a junior objective synonym
works in practice. It goes back to that rule
of priority we talked about. Think of it like
trademarking a brand name. Seeley registered
the trademark for this specific fossil in 1870
with the name Ornithopsis holchi. Right. When
Hulks scientifically reaffirmed that Seeley's
work was accurate and valid, that locked the
name in. So, what happens to the names Owen came
up with in 1875 and 1876 for that exact same
piece of bone? They get booted out. Yes. Because
they were applied to the identical type specimen
after a valid name already existed, they automatically
become invalid. They are junior to the original,
and they describe the exact same objective object.
Therefore, they become junior objective synonyms.
They're essentially tossed into the historical
wastebasket. So, Bothria spondylus magnus. Gone.
Condrastiosaurus Magnus. Gone. Owen's attempts
to overwrite history are officially nullified.
I have to say it is deeply satisfying to see
the dry, bureaucratic rules of science used to
perfectly counter academic bullying. It brought
much needed order back to the classification.
But Hulk didn't just stop at defending Sealy.
He realized that this specific anatomical feature,
the intense bird -like hollowing of the vertebrae,
was actually a unifying characteristic for a
lot of the fragmented giants found in the Wielden
formation. So he starts bringing other lonely
floating fossils into the ornithopsis family.
Yes. He looked at other genera that had been
named from the area. For example, he looked at
a genus called Eukamorotus, which, ironically,
Hulk himself had named back in 1870, based on
different fordibral fragments. He named it himself.
He did. And he realizes those fragments share
the exact same internal architecture as ornithopsis.
So he voluntarily sinks his own genus. He declares
Eukamorotus to be a synonym of ornithopsis. He
also looks at the rest of Owen's chondrosteosaurus
fossils and realizes they belong there, too.
He is consolidating a sprawling, messy group
of fossils under one unified, anatomically justified
name. It sounds like Hulk is the undisputed hero
of the story, cleaning up the timeline and making
everything neat and tidy. But we are talking
about Victorian paleontology. It is literally
never that simple, is it? Even the cleanup guy
makes a mess. Oh, it is a brilliant example of
how easily the literature can become tangled.
In 1882, Hulk is publishing a new paper. He is
describing some newly discovered pelvis material
from the Wieldin, which he assigns to a new species
he calls Ornithoxis eucamerotus. OK. But in the
text of that paper, while trying to clarify the
history of the genus, he makes a critical clerical
error. What does he do? He casually suggests
that Mantel's original bone from 1833 specimen
R2239 the one they all thought was a jaw joint
for decades, should be considered the definitive
type specimen for the entire genus of ornithopsis.
But wait, in 1879, he specifically wrote that
Seeley's Isle of Whitebone was the type specimen.
You can't just swap the anchor of a species halfway
through your career. You absolutely cannot. The
type specimen is the irreplaceable gold standard.
It is the physical, tangible anchor that the
conceptual name is permanently tied to forever.
If you change the type specimen, you risk destabilizing
the entire definition of the species. Hulk's
contradiction created a massive headache in the
scientific literature. Researchers didn't know
which bone officially represented the animal.
So how do they fix a mistake made by the guy
who was supposed to be fixing the mistakes? It
required more paperwork and intervention from
other heavyweights in the field. It wasn't until
1888 that a prominent paleontologist named Richard
Leidecker, working in direct consultation with
Harry Seeley himself, had to publish a formal
official correction. They had to step in. They
had to put it in writing, stating unequivocally
that Hulk's 1882 suggestion was an error and
permanently designating Seeley's Isle of White
specimen, NHMUK PVR 28632 as the sole unalterable
holotype for ornithopsis halki. It's like they
had to issue a formal press release to the academic
world. Please ignore the typo from six years
ago. We are sticking with the original plan.
It just highlights how delicate the scaffolding
of scientific taxonomy really is. It relies entirely
on meticulous record keeping. And everyone agreeing
on the same rules. Right. And that scaffolding
is about to be tested again because once the
ornithopsis is locked in and people realize what
to look for, those hollowed out vertebrae scientists
suddenly start seeing ornithopsis everywhere.
They do? This leads us into a period of wild
expansion. Let's talk about the sprawling species
of ornithopsis. This era is characterized by
a practice very common in early paleontology.
the creation of what we call wastebasket taxa.
Wastebasket taxa. Yeah. When a distinct new genus
is established like ornithopsis with its highly
pneumatic bones, there is a strong temptation
to take any new somewhat similar fragmented fossil
you find and just toss it into that established
genus rather than taking the professional risk
of naming an entirely new dinosaur. So ornithopsis
just becomes the default bucket for giant hollow
bone thing. Precisely. And the first major addition
to the bucket comes from a completely different
geological era. Let's look at the Leeds discoveries
in 1887. So John Whitaker -Hulk is back at it.
He is examining a new collection of fossils,
vertebrae, ribs, and pieces of a pelvis. These
weren't found in the early Cretaceous, Weald,
and Rocks of the South. These were discovered
by a collector named Alfred Nicholson Leeds,
far to the north in the Iceberry Jurassic deposits
of Northamptonshire. And right away, there are
massive red flags that this might not be the
same animal, right? The differences were profound.
First, the size was staggering. The new Iceberry
specimens represented an animal that was substantially
larger and much more robustly built than the
ornithopsis from the Isle of Wight. OK, so bigger
and beefier. But more importantly, the geology
was wrong. These new fossils came from the lower
collovian deposits of the Kalloways Formation.
That is the Middle Jurassic period. So you have
an animal that is way bigger, found in a totally
different part of the country, and lived tens
of millions of years earlier than the original
ornithopsis. And Hulk looks at that and says,
yep. Same genus. He did. Despite the vast temporal
and morphological gaps, Hulk prioritized the
structural similarities he saw in the bones over
the geological context. He named this massive
Jurassic creature Ornithopsis litsi, honoring
the discoverer. Alfred Leeds. Wow. He also attempted
to build out the family tree, placing this genus
within a family called Atlantisauridae, suggesting
it shared a close evolutionary kinship with another
famous British sauropod, Sitiosaurus oxoniensis.
Placing a middle Jurassic giant into an early
Cretaceous genus is wild, but what I find genuinely
hilarious about the whole ornithopsis Leedsi
situation is the absolute inability of subsequent
elite scientists to spell the man's name correctly.
It's a running joke in the literature. You have
these brilliant minds publishing in the most
prestigious academic journals of the era, and
they just butcher it. The taxonomic history of
this specific specimen is completely riddled
with typographical errors that became formalized
in the literature. Hulk clearly named it Leedsci
with a double I at the end. L -E -E -D -S -I
-I. Right. But in 1895, Richard Lidecker refers
to it as Polaurusaurus Leedsii. Dropping an I.
A decade later, in 1905, Arthur Smith Woodward
writes about it and calls it Cediosaurus Leedsi,
also dropping the I. It proves that typos and
bad autocorrects have existed long before computers.
But even through the typos, you can see the uncertainty.
They are shifting it from ornithopsis to Pellerosaurus
to Cediosaurus. Nobody knows where this massive
Jurassic beast actually belongs. It's just getting
passed around. And the confusion isn't limited
to the middle Jurassic. Let's bring in another
outlier, the Mansel Humerus. This is a single,
isolated arm bone found by J .C. Mansell back
in 1868 in yet another distinct geological layer,
the Kimmeridge clay formation, which is late
Jurassic. The Kimmeridge clay is really famous
for marine reptiles, but occasional dinosaur
remains wash -in. Hulk examined this massive
humerus in 1874. He recognized it belonged to
a colossal sauropod, and he wanted to emphasize
its strength. So he coined the name Ishkyrosaurus,
meaning strong lizard. But the rigid rules of
taxonomy strike again and Istrosaurus gets shot
down. Why? It comes down to the absolute rule
against homonyms in zoological nomenclature.
You cannot have two different animals with the
exact same genus name. Makes sense. All tried
to polish Istrosaurus in 1874, but he was entirely
unaware that the prolific and famous American
paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope had already
utilized a remarkably similar name. Israel Ethereum
back in 1869. Ah, Cope. Yes, Cope used it for
a fragmented fossil he initially thought was
a mammal, but was later deemed a reptile. So
Cope beat him to the punch and Hulk's name is
locked out. The bone needs a new identity. Yes.
So in 1887, Richard Leidecker steps in to fix
the nomenclature issue. Leidecker looks at this
giant late Jurassic arm bone and he decides to
toss it into our rapidly expanding wastebasket.
He renames it Ornithopsis mansileae. So let's
review the ornithopsis family tree at this point.
You have the original ornithopsis hulkii in the
early Cretaceous. You have the massive ornithopsis
leadsi in the middle Jurassic. And now you have
ornithopsis mansili in the late Jurassic. It
has become a meaningless catch -all term for
a large British dinosaur with complicated bones.
Exactly. And the debate over that single arm
bone, the mansil humerus, is a perfect microcosm
of how difficult paleontology is. That debate
didn't end in the 1880s. It is still an active
point of contention in modern literature. Really?
What are paleontologists saying about it today?
It is entirely unsettled. In 2006, researcher
David Martill and his colleagues published a
review where they actually chose to retain Lidecker's
name, ornithopsis mancelli, primarily because
Halk's original name was still blocked by Cope's
prior usage. However, many of their peers strongly
disagree. Some argue it should be grouped with
a different sauropod genus, becoming Pelorosaurus
mancelli. And others just throw their hands up
completely, right? Precisely. In 2004, Paul Upchurch
and his team published a massive comprehensive
review of sauropod dinosaurs. They looked at
the mansell humerus and officially designated
it a nomen dubium, a dubious name. Dubious name?
Yes. They concluded that a single isolated arm
bone simply does not possess enough unique diagnostic
anatomical features to definitively assign it
to any specific genus. Further complicating matters,
a 2010 study pointed out that the bone shares
broad anatomical characteristics with two entirely
different branches of the sauropod family tree.
The Robocasauridae and the Titanosauriforms.
It sits right on the morphological fence. It
is the ultimate frustrating puzzle piece. It
looks like it could belong to two different puzzles,
but it doesn't quite complete the picture for
either one. A paleontologist's nightmare. But
wait, the ornithopsis wastebasket wasn't just
catching British fossils. To add one final layer
of complexity, we have to talk about the Swiss
connection. The name literally crosses international
borders. Yes. The confusion was exported. In
1921, an incredibly prolific German paleontologist
named Friedrich von Heren was studying dinosaur
remains recovered from Jurassic deposits near
Bern, Switzerland. Switzerland. Yeah. These deposits
yielded a fragmentary but significant amount
of material, including a long tail sequence.
Hewane looked at these bones and described them
under the name Ornithopsis crepinii. And I love
that he literally put a question mark in the
official scientific name, Ornithopsis question
mark. He is formally publishing his own hesitation.
The question mark is telling. It shows that even
the author recognized the assignment was tentative
at best. Hewane was trying to find a home for
these bones among the known European giants.
But as he continued to study sauropod evolution
over the next few years, his understanding shifted
dramatically. By 1927, Quayne published a major
revision. What did he decide? He decided that
the massive Middle Jurassic lead size specimen
from England and his new Gruppini specimen from
Switzerland possessed too many distinct differences
to remain in the ornithopsis genus. So he pulls
them out of the bucket. He does. He creates a
brand new genus exclusively for them, which he
named Sidiosauriscus. So the Swiss material becomes
Sidiosauriscus Gruppini. But the journey for
those Swiss bones didn't stop in 1927. They recently
got yet another update, right? Indeed. It really
demonstrates the iterative, self -correcting
nature of the science. Nearly a century later,
in the year 2020, a team of modern paleontologists
conducted a rigorous, high -tech re -description
of that original Swiss fossil material. And what
did they find? Armed with a century of new comparative
data and advanced imaging techniques, they concluded
that the Swiss dinosaur was entirely distinct.
It didn't belong in Ornithopsis, and it didn't
belong in Cegiosauriscus. They finally gave it
its own unique independent genus name. amansia.
I love that. From an unknown bone in 1921 to
a tentative ornithopsis, to C. de Sauriscus,
and finally, 100 years later, it stands alone
as amansia. It is a beautiful illustration of
how science slowly, methodically whittles away
the errors until it finds the truth. It takes
time, but it gets there. So what does this all
mean? Which brings us, at long last, out of the
Victorian era, out of the wastebasket taxa, and
into the stark light of modern science. Let's
look at what we actually know today. When we
strip away all the ego, the aggressive renaming,
the typos, and the confusion, what is the physical
reality of Ornithoxis holkei? If a paleontologist
walks into the Natural History Museum today and
looks at Seeley's holotype specimen, NHMUK PVR
28632, what exactly are they seeing? When you
look at the holotype today, completely divorced
from all the historical drama, you are looking
at an extraordinary piece of biological engineering.
To be clear on what remains, it is a single vertebral
centrum. The main body of the bone. Right. Right.
It is missing the neural spine, the tall piece
of bone that would stick up dorsally to anchor
muscles. We only have the main cylindrical body
of the vertebra. But that cylinder tells an incredibly
detailed story. Walk us through the anatomy.
What are the key features that define this creature?
The most immediate and striking feature, the
one Seeley originally noticed, is that it is
intensely pneumatized. It is absolutely riddled
with cavities. In modern paleontological terminology,
we refer to these specific complex internal chambers
and sauropod vertebrae as chameleon. Going back
to our airplane wing analogy, it's that internal
honeycomb structure. Precisely. The presence
of these extensive chameleon is definitive proof
that the living animal possessed a highly complex
respiratory system. It had air sacs that extended
outward from its lungs and literally invaded
the bones of its skeleton. Just like modern birds.
Exactly. This served multiple critical functions.
It drastically reduced the overall weight of
the massive skeleton, allowing the animal to
grow larger without collapsing, and it significantly
increased respiratory efficiency, which is vital
for a multi -ton animal to power its metabolism.
Okay, so we have the internal honeycomb. What
about the external shape? The external morphology
is highly distinct. The vertebra is described
as being narrow and tall. It shows what we call
lateral compression. Running along the bottom
surface, the underside of the bone, is a very
prominent, distinct ridge, which we call a ventral
ridge. Narrow, tall, and a keel on the bottom.
What else? It is strongly opisicolous. This describes
the articulation points, how the individual vertebrae
physically connect to one another to form the
spine. An epistacholus vertebra has a centrum
that is deeply concave at the back end and strongly
convex at the front end. So they slot together
like a massive ball and socket joint, giving
the neck or back both strength and a degree of
flexibility. Exactly. You've got it. And finally,
there is one more crucial external feature. On
the side of the vertebra, there is a deeply inset
hollowed out depression. This is called a pleurical.
In the ornithopsis holotype, This clerical is
subtriangular in shape and it is massive. It
extends over two thirds of the entire length
of the centrum. So we have this laundry list
of very specific traits. The honeycomb camele,
the narrow and tall shape, the ventral keel,
the ball and socket joints and this massive triangular
hollow on the side. Why does all of this specific
geometry matter? Does it actually prove anything
or is it just descriptive? If we connect this
to the bigger picture. It matters immensely because,
in combination, those features are diagnostic.
For a very long time, because the wielden fossils
are so fragmented and because the history of
their naming was so chaotic, many modern researchers
were inclined to just throw the entire genus
out. They just didn't want to deal with it. Right.
They considered the fossils too scrappy to be
scientifically useful, labeling them as dubious
or intermediate forms. They wanted to put ornithopsis
itself into the wastebasket? Yes. But in 1995,
a researcher named William Blows published a
critical reassessment. He meticulously analyzed
those specific traits. He demonstrated that the
unique combination of the extreme lateral compression,
the narrow and tall profile, and that specific
ventral ridge are not just random variations.
They are definitive, unique identifiers. Blow's
confirmed that these traits prove the bone belongs
to a distinct, highly derived titanosauriform.
So Blow's rescues ornithopsis from obscurity.
He clears away the dubious label and proves that
Seeley's Isle of Wight fossil isn't just a generic
piece of rock. It is a specific, scientifically
valid animal. Ornithopsis hulkii earns its permanent
place on the dinosaur family tree. It finally
gets its due. But the incredible thing is the
story of Ornithopsis isn't just confined to the
Isle of Wight or to the dusty archives of Victorian
England. This 130 year old anatomical debate
actually has direct relevance to discoveries
being made right now. Let's bring the timeline
all the way into the present day. It is a perfect
demonstration of how his historical paleontology
continues to inform modern fieldwork. In 2023,
a fascinating new paper was published documenting
a recent discovery in northwestern Germany. Yes,
paleontologists were excavating in an area called
Belve. They are working in a limestone quarry
that dates to the late Beremian to early action
stages that puts it right in the sweet spot of
the early Cretaceous period, roughly the exact
same age as the Wielden formation in England.
Right. And during this excavation, they uncover
a fragmentary dorsal vertebra, a piece of a backbone.
And when the German paleontologists brought this
bone back to the lab and cleaned it up, they
didn't just see a generic sauropod fossil. They
looked at the geometry of the bone and they saw
something distinctly familiar. What did they
see? Did it have the honeycomb? It was more about
the external morphology. The researchers noted
that this new German specimen possessed a very
specific shape. It shared the distinct lateral
compression, the uniquely narrow and tall profile
that William Blows and others had confirmed was
diagnostic of ornithopsis. So they find a bone
in Germany that perfectly matches the architectural
blueprint of the bone from the Isle of Wight.
Precisely. Because of that shared, highly specific
diagnostic trait, the researchers formally referred
the new German specimen to the genus Ornithopsis.
However, in their publication, they elicited
it as Ornithopsis make. And there is that question
mark again. Why the hesitation this time? Why
not just call it Ornithopsis holkei and be done
with it? The S -make is a crucial piece of scientific
shorthand. It stands for species uncertain. The
researchers are making a very careful calibrated
statement. They're saying, based on the distinct
lateral compression we can observe, we are confident
this bone belongs to the genus Ornithopsis. However,
the preservation of this specific fossil is too
poor, or it is missing too many other key features
for us to confidently assign it to the known
bready species, Oholki, or to justify naming
a brand new German species. It's the modern equivalent
of Owen's skepticism, but applied correctly.
They are saying, This is our best, most educated
hypothesis based on the morphological evidence
we have right now. But we are waiting for better,
more complete material before we etch a new species
name in stone. Exactly. It is scientific rigor
in practice. And despite the fragmentary nature,
the discovery itself is highly significant. Because
it completely changes our understanding of where
these animals lived. We went from a single dinosaur
isolated on the Isle of Wight to realizing that
these massive bird -boned titanosauriforms were
roaming across a massive swath of what is now
Europe. A huge geographic expansion. And based
on the size of the vertebra found in Balve, the
researchers estimate this specific German individual
was slightly smaller than the massive 16 to 18
meter giants from Britain. But it proves they
were an established widespread part of the early
Cretaceous ecosystem. It connects the dots. And
I think that incredible geographic lead is the
perfect place to wrap up our deep dive today.
Let's take a step back and look at the sheer
scale of the story we just traced. It's quite
a journey. We started all the way back in 1833,
in the muddy Tilgit forest, with Gideon Mantell
holding a hollowed out piece of spine and completely
understandably, but totally incorrectly, guessing
it was the jaw joint of an iguanodon. We watched
Richard Owen apply a rigorous standard of evidence
to disprove Mantell, only to completely fail
to recognize what the bone actually was himself.
We witnessed Harry Seeley's brilliant stroke
of insight in 1870, looking at those cavities,
realizing there were air sacs just like a bird's
and coining the name ornithopsis. And then we
saw the scientific process briefly derailed by
human ego. We watched Richard Owen through a
taxonomic temper tantrum, aggressively inventing
names like Bothrius Bondylus and Condrastiosaurus,
simply because he found the idea of a bird -like
giant reptile philosophically offensive. We saw
John Whittaker, Hulk, step in to act as the referee,
using strict rules of nomenclature to toss Owen's
names in the bin, even as Hulk made his own clerical
errors along the way. We tracked how the name
ornithopsis ballooned into a wastebasket for
massive bones from entirely different geological
eras, from the Middle Jurassic of England to
the Late Jurassic of Switzerland, before modern
analytical techniques slowly, systematically
pruned those eras away. And finally, we arrived
at the modern day, where that heavily debated,
much maligned piece of Isle of White Bone is
recognized as a vital key to understanding an
entire lineage of 16 meter long, air -filled
titans that roamed from Britain to Germany. If
there is one overarching takeaway from this entire
saga, it is that science is fundamentally, unavoidably
an iterative process. It is a long, winding journey,
not a sudden arrival at absolute truth. It requires
critical thinking. It requires individuals like
Seeley being willing to look at a structure that
everyone else assumes is a tympanic cavity and
ask, what if we are all wrong? What if that is
an air sack? You have to question the baseline.
Exactly. And crucially, it requires the humility
to constantly refine and overwrite our understanding
as new data, like a fragmentary bone pulled from
a German limestone quarry in 2023, emerges to
test our models. Science is undeniably messy
because it is conducted by humans. We have egos,
we make typos, we hold on to outdated philosophies.
But the beauty of the scientific method is that
over decades, and sometimes over centuries, it
slowly self -corrects. The ego fades away, the
junior synonyms get deleted, and the physical
truth of the animal remains. Well said. And before
we let you go, I want to leave you with a final
lingering thought to mull over. We have just
spent the last deep dive tracing how a single
genus, Ornithopsis, spent nearly a century bouncing
between completely different identities. It was
called a jawbone, it was called both Rheospondylus,
it was called Chondrostorosaurus, and its cousins
were called Cetiosuriscus and Amansia. And all
of this confusion happened simply because the
fossil evidence was fragmentary and the scientists
looking at it couldn't see the big picture. They
only had a few puzzle pieces? Given that incredibly
messy history, I want you to think about the
natural history museums of the world right now.
Think about the millions of fragmented, unsorted,
or hastily categorized fossils sitting in dark
dusty drawers in London, Berlin, New York, and
Paris. How many completely undiscovered, missing
branches of the dinosaur family tree are sitting
in those drawers right now, mislabeled with a
name coined by a Victorian scientist who is just
taking a wild guess? How many spectacular new
species? How many paradigm -shifting ancient
monsters are just waiting in the dark for a modern
-day Harry Seeley to open the drawer, look at
the bones with fresh, unbiased eyes, and completely
rewrite the history of life on Earth? Now that
is something to think about. Thanks for taking
the plunge with us. Keep questioning, keep digging,
and we will see you on the next Deep Dive.