Dr William Buckland DD FRS ( 12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856 ) was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster, and a geologist and palaeontologist, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus.

The name became a wastebasket taxon, rather like the dinosaur Megalosaurus, to label any pterosaur remains that could not be distinguished other than by the absence of teeth.

Named in 1825 by English geologist Gideon Mantell, Iguanodon was the second type of dinosaur formally named, after Megalosaurus.

* 1841 — Anatomist Richard Owen creates a new order of reptiles, dinosauria, for animals: Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus, found by Mantell and Buckland.

* The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.

In 1826, Ferdinand von Ritgen gave this dinosaur a complete binomial, Megalosaurus conybeari, which was not used by later authors and is now considered a nomen oblitum.

They were thought to have been made by Megalosaurus and possibly also some left by Cetiosaurus.

For decades after its discovery, Megalosaurus was viewed by many researchers as a definitive or typical large carnivorous dinosaur.

However, a comprehensive study by Benson and colleagues in 2008, and several related analyses published in subsequent years, overturned the previous consensus by identifying several apomorphies, or distinguishing characteristics, in the lower jaw that could be used to separate Megalosaurus from other megalosaurids.

Charles Dickens ' novel Bleak House begins with a description of muddy streets, whose primordial character is emphasized by mention of Megalosaurus: " Implacable November weather.

* Megalosaurus and Cetiosaurus footprints are identified at Ardley, Oxfordshire, England, by Christopher Jackson.

They were thought to have been made by Megalosaurus and possibly Cetiosaurus.

Originally called Megalosaurus saharicus ( many theropods were once erroneously referred to as Megalosaurus ), its name was changed in 1931 by Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach to that used today.

The first fossil bones to be described as those of a dinosaur of the genus Megalosaurus were found close to Stonesfield and named in 1824 by William Buckland.

A fossilized Neanderthal bone will never be found in the same stratum as a fossilized Megalosaurus, for example, because neanderthals and megalosauruses lived during different geological periods, separated by many millions of years.

In the sixties, this tendency was still strong as is shown by the fact that Oskar Kuhn renamed Megalosaurus lonzeensis Dollo 1903 from Belgium into Ornithomimus lonzeensis ( today understood to be a abelisauroid claw ), and Dale Rusell in 1967 renamed Struthiomimus currellii Parks 1933 and Struthiomimus ingens Parks 1933 into Ornithomimus currellii and Ornithomimus ingens.

* Megalosaurus and Cetiosaurus footprints are identified at Ardley, Oxfordshire, by Christopher Jackson.

Reconstruction of Megalosaurus by Samuel Griswold Goodrich from Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom.

Dinosaur classification began in 1842 when Sir Richard Owen placed Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus in " a distinct tribe or suborder of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.

The bone has since been lost but the illustration is detailed enough that some have since identified it as that of Megalosaurus.

However, the rules of the ICZN state that if a name has never been considered valid after 1899, it could be removed from competition for priority, becoming a nomen oblitum ( forgotten name ), while the junior synonym ( in this case Megalosaurus bucklandi ) could be made a nomen protectum ( protected name ).

Since those first finds, many other Megalosaurus bones have been recovered but still no complete skeleton has been found.

Megalosaurus has the distinction of being the first dinosaur to appear in any popular media.

The museum has a garden containing works of art and a Dinosaur Garden with a full-size replica of a Megalosaurus.

Caption reads " anterior extremity of the right lower jaw of the Megalosaurus from Stonesfield near Oxford ".

Despite being formed in a marine environment, the oolite, like the lower Lias, contains some fossilised remains of land-dwelling creatures, including two species of Megalosaurus that were found near Sherborne.

A year later, in 1827, Gideon Mantell included Megalosaurus in his geological survey of southeastern England, and assigned the species its current binomial name, Megalosaurus bucklandii.

Megalosaurus had a relatively large head and its teeth were those of a carnivore.

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History contains a descriptive display of Megalosaurus and of the history of its discovery.

Furthermore, several researchers failed to find any characteristics in the jaw that could be used to distinguish Megalosaurus from its relatives, and many began to regard it as a nomen dubium.

A Megalosaurus was one of the main dinosaurs featured in John Brosnan's 1984 novel, Carnosaur, though it was not featured in its film adaptation.

Conybeare's presentation was made at the same meeting at which William Buckland described the dinosaur Megalosaurus and the combination created a sensation in scientific circles.

Together with Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus, it was one of the three genera originally used to define Dinosauria.

* 1824 — Buckland finds lower jaw of the carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus.

* Robert Plot publishes The Natural History of Oxford-shire, being an essay toward the natural history of England, in which he describes the fossilised femur of a human giant, now known to be from the dinosaur Megalosaurus.

Megalosaurus may have been the first dinosaur to be described in the scientific literature.

Technically, though, the name was published after the advent of binomial nomenclature, and so if it was truly intended to represent the establishment of a new genus it would have priority over Megalosaurus.

Sarjeant submitted a petition to the ICZN to formally suppress the genus name Scrotum in favor of Megalosaurus.

Furthermore, the partial femur was too incomplete to definitely be referred to Megalosaurus and not a different, contemporary theropod.

Engraving from William Buckland's " Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield ", 1824.

Buckland identified the organism as being a giant animal related to the Sauria ( lizards ) and he placed it in the new genus Megalosaurus, estimating the animal to be 12 m long in life.

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.

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

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

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