Richard Owen is best known for naming the Dinosauria and for opposing Darwin’s “On the origin of species“. For the former, he is (usually) celebrated, as the name is in common usage around the world. For the latter, he is reviled as a bigot and his stance allowed subsequent generations of evolutionists to tar him as an obscurantist (although conveniently overlooking his scientific arguments). Owen’s statue used to have pride of place in London’s Natural History Museum (he oversaw the transfer of the natural history collections to the new South Kensington museum in 1881 and he was knighted in 1884). However, in the lead up to the bicentennial celebrations for Charles Darwin, Owen was moved and a marble statue of Darwin was put in his place. Notwithstanding this treatment, the man does not deserve to be shrouded in the mists of history. His achievements were immense, not least of which was his role in the construction of the Natural History Museum. Owen’s expertise was in comparative anatomy applied to living and fossil animals, and his status is that of the best known 19th Century naturalist. Today, few know of his contribution to science by the way he approached the numerous contemporary reports of sea-monsters.
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