What will you say if I tell you that years ago they found the greatest find in archaeology but then lost it!
It was not even a small thing but a big piece of bone!
This is the story of the first DINOSAUR bone ever found way back in 1677 and which was promptly lost soon after!
As far as history goes, its hysterical!
In the amazing Novel called a short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson; he narrates this dark comedy! Now I had finished reading or listening to the book couple of years back which was around 5 hours or so! Then Bill updates the book to make it double the size! Not fair!
Interesting though!
Now coming back to the bone!
In 1677; workers unearthed the large lower end of a fossilized femur (thighbone) in a limestone quarry in Cornwell, near Chipping Norton, England.
The fossil was given to Robert Plot, the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and professor at Oxford University!
Long before the word “dinosaur” existed, Plot published an illustration of the bone in his 1677 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. He concluded it belonged to a massive human giant (like those mentioned in biblical history) or perhaps a large elephant brought over by the Romans!
After Plot documented and illustrated the specimen, the physical bone was misplaced or discarded. It vanished from the historical record!
Today, the only evidence that the bone ever existed is Plot’s detailed description and the copperplate engraving printed in his 1677 book!
Paleontologists later realized from Plot’s precise drawing that the bone actually belonged to a Megalosaurus, a large carnivorous dinosaur.
But since because the original specimen is lost and the creature was not yet understood, humanity had to wait until the 1820s for Megalosaurus to be officially named and recognized as an extinct giant reptile!
So that’s humanity for you! A human can even lose a giant dinosaur bone!
The next time you lose your remote, don’t worry too much! Historically some have lost a huge dinosaur bone!
Historical though were the songs sung by
Prathivadhi Bhayankara Sreenivas!
Now stop searching for that lost pair of sock and sleep!
Shub ratri…
