h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Was this the same Reverend William Buckland who named the first dinosaur when he scientifically described Megalosaurus ('great lizard') in 1824 (previously known as 'Scrotum Humanum').If so, did you know that in 1829 he became the first person to scientifically discover dinosaur remains on the Isle of Wight when he uncovered Iguanodon remains in Yaverland in 1829?

Buckland spent the glorious summer of 1832 at Yaverland and found five boxes worth of fossils, including a complete Hypsilophodon skeleton in his collection from the Brighstone area (but he failed to recognise it as a new species, believing it to be a baby Iguanodon – or quite possibly a Roman prostitute...)

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Amazing.

All sea lanes lead to the Isle of Wight, apparently.

I've been reading about Rev Buckland. Apparently, his wife was a geologist, too, and they spent their honeymoon going around hunting fossils...

It seems that once, she covered the kitchen table with paste, and they let their pet tortoise walk over it, to analyse the footprints...dedicated AND innovative...

She should get all the credit. She did all that, and had nine children.

So Mrs Buckland was able to combine the tortoise-ownership of a flâneur with the domestic responsibilities of a large family while still conducting pioneering research into geology and dinosaurs, before anyone else in the world knew what those bits of bone or footprints could be? Definitely a remarkable person.

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She must have been.

I also found Mark Twain's wisecrack about the brontosaurus.

'...Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of paris.'

'Is Shakespeare Dead?'

The Natural History Museum didn't admit that brontosaurus was a fake until the 1990s.

Oh, more on Mary Morland Buckland: she used to make leather models of dinosaurs.

And their son could identify an ichthyosaur by its bones by the time he was four. What a family.

Quite a timely comment as they've just announced today that they want to move the Carnegie Diplodocus plaster skeleton from the Natural History Museum – although various newspapers etc are reporting that they're getting rid of it to make it sound more dramatichttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31025229

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So they're still impressing people with 'gee-whiz' science?

I just hope there is a bowl of
To go with the whale.

I think I'm about to faint. The weirdly wonderful ways of the world do make me want to faint sometimes. . Just when you think it can't get more surreal, it does.

Great piece and accompanying picture. Unsettling. Tortoisy.

People are funny, aren't they? Thanks.