How Did Richard Owen Contribute To Paleontology

600 scientific papers, forgotten. Two of the greatest contributions to paleontology, forgotten. The only thing Sir Richard Owen is known for is his opposition to the “mighty” Darwin. Richard Owen helped to start a brand new science and proved many theories and disproved even more in the field of anatomy. He loved to teach and was sometimes called cantankerous, though. He didn’t realize he was a paleontologist.

Richard Owen was born on July 7th, 1804 and grew up in a wealthy family who owned a five-story house on the edge of Dalton Square in Lancaster, England. Most of the money possessed by Owen’s family was from trade in the West Indies. At a young age Owen hated learning because his teachers were bad, but that was about to change. Owen’s very ambitious

He lived on Nicholson Street and rode in a carriage to the University that was surrounded by smaller schools and Gothic buildings. Once Owen registered for classes he met his teachers. Alexander Monro III was his anatomy teacher. Owen spurned the lectures because they often turned into student protests, Monro’s inherited lecture notes were woefully out of date, and he often came into the formal lecture hall spattered in blood from his recent dissections. These same lectures were to cause a strong aversion to anatomy in the young Charles Darwin the following

He named the branch of creatures that I love and study. He rose from a kid who his teachers thought “would come to a bad end” to a famous anatomist who lead a ton of different organisms. He used his wit to think of a detailed plan to defeat his enemies and worked fairly well with people older than him such as Cuvier, Buckland, and Clift. Richard Owen didn’t know he was a paleontologist when he named Dinosauria, when I become a paleontologist it will be nothing but