Page "Megalosaurus" Paragraph 12

In 1852, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to build a model of Megalosaurus for the exhibition of dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, where it remains to this day.

Early paleontologists, never having seen such a creature before, reconstructed it like the dragons of popular mythology, with a huge head and walking on all fours.

The hump on the back of the sculpture in Crystal Palace and other restorations from the 1800s was based on the material now referred to as Becklespinax.

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, when other theropods began to be discovered in North America, that a more accurate picture was developed.

Some confusion still exists, for at one time, all theropods from Europe were given the title Megalosaurus.

Since then, these have mostly been reclassified.

For further confusion, the most reproduced anatomy diagram of a Megalosaurus skeleton was produced before any vertebrae had been recovered.

While drawing it, Friedrich von Huene of the University of Tübingen, Germany, instead used the backbones of Altispinax, a mysterious big theropod known from high-spined dorsal vertebrae and at times classified as a spinosaur.

Hence, many later drawings, based on his original, show Megalosaurus with a deep spinal ridge or even a small sail, like that of Spinosaurus.