Every dinosaur name has a meaning behind it , whether it is ‘flat lizard’ like the Plateosaurus mentioned in this article. Other details you will encounter include the master of sauropods and the man who gave names to around 500 new species of fossil animals.
Gideon Mantell
One of the first amateur fossil hunters in the world was Gideon A. Mantell (1790 – 1852), who was actually a physician that came from Britain. He gave names to a couple of dinosaurs, such as the Hylaeosaurus (‘woodland lizard’) in 1833, which came from the early Cretaceous period and Iguanodon in 1825 , a plant-eating dinosaur that grew a conical spike on each of its thumbs. While Gideon is credited with discovering the first Iguanodon tooth in 1822, there have been claims that this find could have been the work of his wife, Mary Ann Mantell.
Othniel Marsh
Credit for the naming of the dinosaur suborder Theropoda (1881) and Sauropoda (1878) goes to Othniel C. Marsh (1831 – 1899). This American paleontologist from Yale University also gave names to about 500 new species of fossil animals that had been found by him and other fossil hunters. Marsh, who also named many different dinosaurs, completed the naming of many dinosaur genera.
Ruth Mason
When she was just 7 years old, Ruth Mason discovered a huge dinosaur fossil bone bed that offered a collection of thousands of ancient specimens on her family’s ranch located at Harding County, South Dakota. Named the “Ruth Mason Quarry,” tens of thousands of dinosaur fossils have been uncovered since. In addition to finding the teeth of the mighty T. rex, there were a great deal of fossils belonging to the Edmontosaurus annectens , plant-eating dinosaurs with duck bills.
Jack McIntosh
If you want to know anything about a sauropod, Dr. Jack McIntosh is currently considered one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the subject. McIntosh corrected the naming of many sauropods that had been originally named by O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope. Instead of calling the better-known name of the Brontosaurus, he encouraged the use of the name Apatosaurus. In 1975, he identified the correct skull for the Apatosaurus , an error that had lasted 50 years. Marsh had placed the skull of a Camarasaurus skull on the body of an Apatosaurus.
Hermann Von Meyer
In 1837, German paleontologist Hermann von Meyer named and described the Plateosaurus (meaning ‘flat lizard’). The dinosaur lived around 222 to 219 million years ago , during the late Triassic Period. The herbivore was large and weighed about 1,500 pounds. Its neck was long with a small head attached at the end. Its hand had five fingers with a large thumb claw. Some believe that the Plateosaurus may have had the ability to use its hand for grasping, as well as walking. At the end of its body, was a very long tail. During the late Triassic period, this kind of dinosaur was quite common in Europe.