Asked what William Buckland, who named Megalosaurus in 1824, was like, Steve Brusatte calls him the original nutty professor. He adds that Buckland was also a devout ordained minister.
…the ground as people were building canals, as people were mining rock, and these impossible monsters, these giant, weird reptilian creatures. This was like a thunderbolt. What were these things? What did they imply about the Earth and the age of the Earth and the position of people on this planet?
So I mentioned at the start this fellow, William Buckland. Can you tell us a bit about him? He sounds like quite a character.
…and I'll return to that in a second. But if he was in this room, he'd be pacing up and down. In his robes, he'd have an animal skull in one hand, an ammonite in another hand. He'd be shoving these things into people's faces, asking his students what they are. He'd be impersonating animals the way they walk. He loved animals. He had a pet bear at his house, which he dressed in academic robes. He loved eating animals. His all-time dream was to eat his way through the animal kingdom, and he would have these dinner parties where he'd serve mice on toast and porpoise and possum and penguin. But at the same time, he was a very devoutly religious man. His father was a rector in the Anglican church. He was an ordained minister and he was a performer. He really was. He was a pretty well-known figure in the university and academic world. He corresponded with all the other learned men of the time. He knew Darwin. In fact, Darwin found him a little bit vulgar, a little bit too much of a…
Do the French know about this?
Nobody tells them. I don't know.
Emma, he was obviously a very eccentric character, but he was also a respected scientist. Before he came up with the Megalosaurus, what had he been working on?
