The book I read to research this post was Dinosaurs A Very Short Introduction by David Norman which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Dinosaurs were first recognized for what they were in 1847. Prior to that people just thought they were rock abnormalities. It did revolutionize how people thought about the history of the world & we know Darwin was aware of this discovery when he was coming up with his theory of evolution which took it a step further. The ages of the when the dinosaurs lived were normally named after where dinosaurs from that period were first discovered. Hence we have names like the devonian period & the pennsylvanian period. Fossils tend to be be found at sites that yield coal deposits partly because they are obviously mining the coal and obviously as the rock is broken up and removed coal miners find them & also because it’s soft rock. When they had the Great Exhibition in London the people who built the huge exhibition hall out of glass didn’t want it to go to waste and it was resited at Sydenham and became Crystal Palace. They then had a dilemma about what to display in there and some bright spark came up with the idea of models of authentic dinosaurs. This helped educate people about that wasn’t generally known at the time and brought it to prominence.
scratbagroberts 