Who really came up with the name Megalosaurus, according to Emma Nicholls on In Our Time?

Emma Nicholls says Buckland is the only author on the 1824 paper, but the name itself most likely came from his collaborator William Conybeare. Some sources credit the physician James Parkinson, known for Parkinson's disease, because he appears to have been the first to use the name in public. The name means 'great lizard'.

• Buckland's future wife, Mary Morland, drew the Oxford specimens that illustrated the 1824 paper; they married a year later.
• Gideon Mantell supplied a second set of bones described in the same paper.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-11-05). Read the whole episode summary →

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