SciFri Extra: Science Diction On The Word 'Dinosaur'

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the turn of the 19th century, Britons would stroll along the Yorkshire Coast, stumbling across unfathomably big bones. These mysterious fossils were all but tumbling out of the cliffside, but people had no idea what to call them. There wasn’t a name for this new class of creatures. Until Richard Owen came along. Owen was an exceptionally talented naturalist, with over 600 scientific books and papers. But perhaps his most lasting claim to fame is that he gave these fossils a name: the dinosaurs. And then he went ahead and sabotaged his own good name by picking a fight with one of the world’s most revered scientists. Want more Science Diction? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for our newsletter. Woodcut of the famous dinner inside of an Iguanodon shell at the Crystal Palace in 1854. Artist unknown. (Wikimedia Commons) Footnotes And Further Reading: Special thanks to Sean B. Carroll and the staff of the Natural History Museum in London. Read an article by Howard Markel on this same topic. Credits: Science Diction is written and produced by Johanna Mayer, with production and editing help from Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, with story editing help from Nathan Tobey. Our theme song and music are by Daniel Peterschmidt. This episode also featured music from Setuniman and The Greek Slave songs, used with permission from the open-source digital art history journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. We had fact-checking help from Michelle Harris, and mixing help from Kaitlyn Schwalje. Special thanks to the entire Science Friday staff.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, we're back again with another episode of Science Diction. I hope you've been geeking out
0:05.7	about this stuff as much as I have. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I was just obsessed
0:11.7	with the Brontosaurus. Couldn't get enough of it. So you better bet I'm excited for this episode.
0:18.6	Our resident word nerd, Johanna Mayer, is back with the story of the man
0:22.1	who coined the word dinosaur. Settle in, folks. It's going to be a good one. But first, we need
0:27.7	your help. We'd like to learn more about you and what you're interested in and how Science Friday
0:33.0	fits into your lives. So please, take this short survey so we can learn more about you.
0:39.5	Head on over to science friday.com slash word survey. Here's science diction.
0:45.3	When you step into the main hall at the Natural History Museum in London, it feels more like you're
0:50.8	in a cathedral.
0:59.4	Vaulted ceilings, light streaming through tall windows, all that jazz.
1:06.3	And when you walk through that hall, under the blue whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling and past the full dinosaur skeleton, you approach a staircase.
1:13.7	It's one of those grand staircases, like the one in the Titanic, with a landing for someone
1:19.6	very important to stand on very prominently.
1:23.5	And that's exactly where you'll find Charles Darwin, or a gleaming white statue of him,
1:29.2	sitting all pensive on a throne with his hands folded in his lap, overseeing the hall.
1:35.5	But there was one person who would have really, really hated that Darwin statue,
1:43.9	the founder of the Natural History Museum.
1:47.1	His name was Sir Richard Owen, and he invented the word dinosaur.
1:53.2	From Science Friday, this is science diction.
1:56.2	I'm Johanna Mayer.
1:57.0	We're talking about the word dinosaur.
	...

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