That’s not to say that Owen, who was renowned for his ability to reconstruct previously unknown animals, as he did with a six-foot tall extinct bird known as Dinornis with nothing more than a six-inch fragment of its leg bone, doesn’t deserve recognition for many extraordinary accomplishments. Owen first coined the term dinosaur (fearfully great reptile) in 1842, based on fossils found in Britain. The glory of having made the first scientific description of dinosaurs went instead to Sir Richard Owen-an Englishman with the disdainful countenance of a mad scientist and a personality to go with it. Marsh first pronounced the bones to be those of a prosauropod dinosaur-a delay that contributed to the bones languishing in obscurity ever since.ĭespite the fact that Benjamin Silliman first published accounts of the discovery of the bones in his American Journal of Science in 1820, and that the latest in a long series of studies of the bones was published by paleontologist Adam Yates just three years ago in 2004, The Bones from the Well have until now been largely forgotten. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 1896 that famed Yale Peabody Museum curator O. They remain as little more than chalk marks in the sandstone, but have been the subject of continual study from the time they were first unearthed in 1818. Even among paleontologists there are those who are ignorant about East Windsor’s fossils and the role they continue to play in the progress of dinosaur science.įragments of the forelimbs of a small plant-eating dinosaur that lived early in the of the Age of Dinosaurs, The Bones from the Well stand as the earliest verifiable discovery of dinosaur bones in North America. (Photo courtesy of Charlotte Foley.)įew in Connecticut-and for that matter the world-have ever heard of The Bones from the Well. She hopes that in addition to its new library display, East Windsor will one day have road signs commemorating its dinosaur as well. Masters resides at the site where the bones were first discovered nearly two centuries ago. The displays were dedicated in recognition of her twenty-five years of service as a member of the library's board. Nancy Masters (above) stands next to the new display of casts of The Bones from the Well and a wooden sculpture of Anchisaurus that were unveiled at the Library at Warehouse Point on Sunday. Yet, if not for folks like the local residents who gathered here at the Library at Warehouse Point on Sunday, The Bones from the Well might just as well be buried all over again. East Windsor, CT-As discoveries of dinosaur bones go few are more distinguished.
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