Paper Dinosaurs: A Hypertext Catalog of Rare Documents
(1824–1969)

URL: http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/pubserv/hos/dino/welcome.htm

SITE SUMMARY: This is an online catalog of an actual exhibition that was held in the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Missouri, October 17, 1996 to April 30, 1997, and includes items from the History of Science Collection in this library that is "recognized as one of the world's leading collections of information on science, engineering, and technology." This catalog features rare books, journals, and articles in scientific journals, all illustrating the early history of dinosaur discovery and restoration. It contains excerpts (in actual words or precise data) and reproduced pages (including writings and illustrations), from noted primary documents featured in the exhibition, along with original documents' bibliographic citations. The site is accessible by scrolling down and clicking the Next box, Index box (with link to a bibliography featuring links to the documents), or Contents box (leading to the Contents links of exhibit items and other catalog items not in the exhibit).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES

1. Go to the Paper Dinosaurs page with Richard Owen's document "Report on British Fossil Reptiles." (Find via the Contents Page, then the Main Exhibit Contents, then the link titled "The Word 'Dinosaur' Is Coined.") Identify the scientific name that Owen proposed for creatures now known as dinosaurs. Explain why he chose to distinguish these creatures from other animals. What did he suggest dinosaurs are "a distinct tribe of"? Identify "the principal and best established genera … of this tribe." Describe one of the genera in detail. (Hint: For more information, check a Web site cited in the Related Internet Sites section below.) Provide citations for Web sites used and Owen's document.
2. Read William Buckland's "Notice on the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard." (Find as suggested for the document in Question/Activity no. 1 above.) Describe his method of scientifically naming a particular dinosaur. Imagine a dinosaur you could name, then name it, using Buckland's method.
3. Choose a dinosaur person and citation listed in the Paper Dinosaurs Web site's index. Give the document's bibliographic citation and Web page url. Identify the discovery and idea that the document features, and provide quotations by the document's author, if available.
4. Provide a brief profile of Mary Anning (a noted early fossil finder who had one article published in a scientific journal). (Hint: Find information at Web sites cited in the Related Internet Sites section below, such as "Mary Anning, Fossil Finder." Note this biography, paragraph six, then tell who wrote a letter about Anning's skills, and when, then describe Anning's skills, quoting the letter writer. See the biography's paragraphs four and five. What did the biographer writer say are Anning's discoveries and claim is Anning's most important find from a scientific viewpoint? What did the letter writer or profile writer say about Anning and her work with reference to her social status? What are general features provided in this Anning's biographical profile?)
5. Keeping the Anning profile in Question/Activity no. 4 above in mind, provide two other profiles of paleontology people of the past. One person should be a scientist. The other person can be a self-taught dinosaur discoverer or fossil finder. (Suggestion: For the fossil finder be guided by the biographical profile of Mary Anning.) (Tip: For information on paleontology people of the past, see the Web sites on T.H. Huxley and the Huxley File, and Dr. Joseph Leidy 1823–91 Online Exhibit, plus The History of Paleontology, and Dinosaur Paleontology: An Overview, whose urls are cited in the Related Internet Sites section below. Note Web sites on paleontologists of the past and present cited in this book's chapter on "Paleobiology—In the News, Highlights, Subjects, and Links.")

1. Visit the Web sites Dinosaur Trace Fossils, and Dinosaur Tracks and Traces (noting its Overview of Dinosaur Tracking). (Find urls as cited in the Related Internet Sites section below.) Identify various items and ways of identifying dinosaur fossils. Explain one way of identification. Give an example of the identification method you chose. (Hint: Go to the Paper Dinosaurs Web site. Click the Contents link, then Table of Contents—Exhibited Items or Complete Index and Bibliography. Find a document about a head, footprint, or other identifying feature, then read about it, describe the feature and what it helps to identify about the creature with which it is connected.)
2. Check the Paper Dinosaurs Web site for locations of fossils. Find and describe something on a dinosaur that was discovered in an area near where you live. Extra Activity One: Find more information on this dinosaur and location at another Web site or area cited just below. Extra Activity Two: Find and describe something on a dinosaur in any location. Extra Activity Three: Identify three kinds of fossils as stated at the Weird Explorations in the History of Paleontology Web site. (Find information at one of these Web sites or areas titled Dinosauria—Translation and Pronunciation Guide, or Dinosauricon—Dinosaur Genus, or the Paleontology page at Neartica—Gateway to the Natural World of North America. [Urls for Web sites cited just above are cited in the Related Internet Sites section below, or in this book's Appendix B.])
3. See the documents "How to Create A Dinosaur Report" and "Basic Methods of Paleontology." (Find as cited below.) Imagine that you go searching for a fossil or discover a dinosaur either near where you live or at a place that you find interesting. What would you look for or find, and which things would you do? Write a report applying the guidelines in the documents cited above to information you find at the Paper Dinosaurs Web site, and at any of the Web sites or areas cited in Question/Activity no. 6 above. (Find "How to Create A Dinosaur Report" via the Dinosaurs area of the Zoom School Web site cited in the Related Internet Sites section of this book's chapter featuring "Paleontology: The Window to Science Education" by Richard Stucky, and note that document's section on "Basic Methods of Paleontology.") (Tip: Note Questions/Activities no. 1 and no. 2 in this book's chapter on Stucky's document to help you identify some of the guidelines for writing a report.)

RELATED INTERNET SITE(S)

"When Was the Dinosauria Named?" by Jeff Poling, 1996

http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/dino/name.htm

In an interesting way, this essay reveals that Richard Owen named the dinosauria in an April 1842 paper that is a revision of a lecture given during July or August 1841 (the date usually, but in error, thought of as the date on which the word was first used).

Name That Dino: What Does the Word Dinosaur Mean and How Are Dinosaurs Named?

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/allabout/Names.shtml

Classification—The Dinosauricon

http://dinosaur.umbc.edu/taxa/index.html

See the list of alphabetically arranged links of dinosaurs' scientific names by groups. Place a mouse arrow over a link s to see a common name. Click a link to see a ladder like scale of particular animals in a group and their placement in an evolutionary scheme. See for example Tyrannosauroidea.

Dinosauria Online—Translation and Pronunciation Guide, by Ben Creisler

http://www.dinosauria.com/dml/names/dinoa.htm or http://www.dinosauria.com/dml/sitemap.html

Alphabet letter links go to pages with data in abbreviated form on dinosaur names and their derivation, meaning, translation of, and the reason for them; plus the dinosaur's classification, the geological period when the dinosaur originated, the place where the dinosaur was first found, the last name of the person who gave the name, the date of the naming or the discovery, and the namer's comments quoted or paraphrased. See also the Dinosauria Online sitemap page with links to a Translation and Pronunciation Guide introduction page, and an instructional page with information on forming dinosaur names. In addition, note on the sitemap page links to an omnipedia, dispatches of scientific news on dinosaurs, a journal, hot links, and more.

Dinosauricon—Dinosaur Genus

http://dinosaur.umbc.edu/genera/index.html

This Web page provides detailed information on citing dinosaur's scientific names and their classifications. There is also a link to an alphabetic list of names. After clicking the alphabet list link, then a letter, a list of dinosaur names appears. Choose a name (e.g., maiasaura), then you will be taken to a page of information including names, size, species type, year of discovery, names of discoverers or experts involved with the discovered specimen, the time and place it existed, particular remains found, a brief essay including links, images, and links to information on particular dinosaurs who belong to the group and are known by both their general and a particular name (e.g., maisaura peeblesorum).

Dinosaur Tracks and Traces

http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/dinos/dinotracks.html

This Web site, provided by the Illinois State Geological Survey Geoscience Education and Outreach Unit, has a link (with a summary) to an Overview of Dinosaur Tracking (with changing views of the importance of tracks and traces). It also features links, with summaries, to other sites on dinosaur tracks in various places.

Dinosaur Trace Fossils

http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ENVS/research/ichnology/dinotraces.html

Anthony Martin, connected to the Environmental Studies Program at Emory University in Georgia, provides an introduction to and categories of trace fossils. See also, via links at http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ENVS/research/ichnology, a Trace Fossils Image Database, a Trace Fossil Identification Guide, an Introduction to Ichnology (the study of plant and animal traces), a History of Ichnology, and an Ichnology newsletter.

The History of Paleontology

http://www.etsu.edu (do a search in the search box)

At this East Tennessee State University Institute of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Web site, see several pages of illustrations with brief information on paleontologists of note including Charles Lyell and his Principles of Geology, Baron Georges Cuvier who compared fossils with living animals, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Richard Owen, Charles Darwin, U.S. paleontologists Edward Cope and O. Charles Marsh, significant sites of the 1900s, some famous dinosaur species, and other significant finds of the 1900s.

Dinosaur Paleontology—Historical Overview

http://museum.montana.edu/www/paleocat/chriso/history

This Web page features a timeline on the study of fossils and people who found or studied them. Time periods, people, and studies include Ancient History (with its supposed dragons and griffins), Early History (with Jean Baptiste LaMarck and Charles Lyell), Recent History (with Mary Anning, William Buckland, Richard Owen, T.H. Huxley, and William Parker Foulke in New Jersey), the U.S. Wild West (with Edward Cope who found a kangeroo-like dinosaur, had a law named after him, and was part of a feud with O. Charles Marsh that sparked the U.S. interest in paleontology). Note also adventurers including Earl Douglas (who worked on what is now Dinosaur National Monument), Roy Chapman Andrews (said to be the model for Indiana Jones), field paleontologists who work for the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of Natural History, and the beginning of Modern Times with John Ostrom (supporter of Huxley's claim that birds are dinosaur descendants), and others (e.g., those who studied dinosaur physiology and ichnofossils).

Biographies at Strange Science: The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology

http://www.strangescience.net (click links)

Biographies are of well known and lesser known fossil finders, paleontologists, and other scientists involved with some aspect of paleontology. Links are to women paleontologists or fossil finders, and individual paleontologists or discoverers of fossils.

T.H. Huxley File

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/toc.html or http://babbage.clarku.edu/huxley/toc.html

On this site for Thomas Henry Huxley, a nineteenth-century British biologist and natural history professor who studied fossils and influenced the teaching of science in schools, click the text index. See arranged by years the links to Huxley's paleontological and other science articles (e.g., 1856 "On the Method of Palaeontology"). On the Table of Contents page, also scroll to Guides, then click a link to the Frankensteinosaurus article on Huxley.

"On the Classification of the Dinosauria" 1870, by T.H. Huxley

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM3/ClDino.html

In this document that is part of the Scientific Memoirs at the Huxley Files Web site, Huxley, a doctor and biologist with an interest in natural history and paleontology, provided data identified as the "Classification and Affinities of the Dinosauria" and "The History and Definition of the Group." It includes Huxley's comment to a quotation by Richard Owen introduced here. There are also a discussion at the end of the document, and descriptions of dinosaurs found in particular places, including Britain, Central Europe and Germany, the Ural Mountains and India, and North America.

Doctor Joseph Leidy 1823–91 Online Exhibit

http://www.acnatsci.org/museum/leidy/index.html

This exhibit at the Web site for the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, features data on this "father of American vertebrate paleontology," pioneer in the fields of protozoology and parasitology; expert in geology, entomology, and pathology; and natural history teacher. Links go to a biography, data on his work with fossils and his other studies. The fossils and other studies pages include precise references to his publications and what he wrote in them.

Mary Anning, Finder of Fossils, 1799–1847

http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/anning.html

This biographical profile of a self-taught fossil discoverer features a quotation from a letter that points to Anning's knowledge and how she worked, and an annotation about Anning as cited in a 1995 issue of the British Journal for the History of Science.

Mary Anning in Weird Explorations into the History of Paleontology

http://www.dinosaur.org/dinotimemachine.htm

Notes that Anning had one publication in a paleontological magazine, describes Anning's first and more important discovery, and explains various kinds of fossils (e.g., type, holotype, genoholotype).