While visiting London with friends recently, we took the chance to visit the British Museum of Natural History. It’s a wonderful, cavernous old building in Kensington with mock gothic arches, labarynthine hallways and huge galleries filled with all manner of dinosaurs, fish, reptiles, mammals, invertibrates, and everything else inbetween.
The place holds fond memories for me - like many young children I was fascinated by dinosaurs and proudly recited their names at family gatherings. I can still remember my first visit to the museum at about 6 years old, and the feeling that we were entering a very special place indeed.
Returning as an adult rekindled those memories. After nearly thirty years the Diplodocus skeleton still stands proudly in the main hall, but the Tyrannosaurus skull is no longer off to the side, and the Triceratops is no longer parked like an armoured car to the right of the entrance doors.
Returning as an adult also meant I returned with many years worth of reading, knowledge and perceived wisdom stored away in the darker recesses of my mind. I surprised myself when we walked into a display showcasing the story of “archeology”, and therefore the effective founders of the museum.
Looking around, I was shocked to discover that Gideon Mantell was not afforded pride of place, and could not hide my disappointment, and therein lies a story that I couldn’t really tell because we had impressionable youngsters with us.
The display (like most text books, public galleries, and museums) heaps credit on Richard Owen for the discovery of Dinosaurs. While Richard Owen was chiefly responsible for the creation of the Natural History Museum, and the coining of the name “Dinosaur”, that’s all history will actually credit him with.
The Natural History Museum was created in the same era that Darwin published the “Origin of the Species”. Richard Owen was a religious man, and at times an outspoken critic of natural selection. If he had lived today, he would have promoted “intelligent design”. You perhaps need to remember that science had not dared challenge the biblical account of history until Darwin published - books, scholars and theologians taught that the world was created in six days by a big white chap in a beard and robes about four thousands years ago. In order to ingratiate yourself with those who might fund your research, or the museum you want to start, you would need to tow the line.
History will record that Gideon Mantell made the first dinosaur discoveries in Oxfordshire, England - closely followed by Mary Anning in Dorset. Richard Owen did everything in his power (which by then was quite considerable) to thwart Mantell’s discovery, and stood on his results for years - even attempting to take credit for the discovery himself. Mantell nearly lost everything when he should have been celebrated.
Mary Anning quietly worked at Charmouth and Lime Bay in Dorset, digging curiosities out of the limestone cliffs. You may have heard the children’s rhyme - “She sells sea shells by the sea shore” - it’s about Mary Anning. She can be counted as the first professional archeologist - Lyme bay is now known as “The Jurassic Coast”.
Yet there Owen stands, in the centre of the display at the Natural History Museum, credited with the discovery and naming of the Dinosaurs, while the print of Mantell is around a corner, a sideshow with Mary Anning.
While looking at the displays I became angry. After all these years, and with the benefit of the whole story being exposed over the years, the man of science - Gideon Mantell - is still being ignored, and all credit is being heaped on the man of the church who did everything in his power - and more besides - to prevent the earliest advances in palaeontology and archeology from taking place.
To put things right, at some point a slight will have to be made against the religious world view that Owen promoted. That’s not goint to happen any time soon, because a great majority of the people of this world still believe that the world was made by a big beardy chap in six days.