Thursday, 1 October 2026 · Almaty

This Is the First Dinosaur Bone to Receive a Name, in the Eighteenth Century

This Is the First Dinosaur Bone to Receive a Name, in the Eighteenth Century

This is the first dinosaur bone to receive a name, in the eighteenth century. It was christened Scrotum humanum, that is, the human scrotum. Why, I think, hardly needs explaining. The term does not, of course, conform to the Linnaean binomial, being rather descriptive in character. Some suppose that it was a fragment of the bone of a Megalosaurus, though the theory is doubtful.

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