Euskelosaurus discovery
Alfred “Gogga” Brown [1834 – 1920], an English-born, self-taught palaeontologist and naturalist, discovered numerous new species of reptiles and fish in Cape Colony, South Africa. Conservation has revealed an archive letter to Sir Roderick Murchison [1792– 1871] dated 8 January 1866, in which Brown provides a long description of what he believes to be fossilised reptilian bones and teeth that he discovered in the Stormberg Mountains. The bones were sent to Murchison, who passed them to Thomas Henry Huxley [1825 – 1895]. They formed the basis of Huxley’s paper “On some Remains of large Dinosaurian Reptiles from the Stormberg Mountains, South Africa” (J. Geol. Soc. London 23, 1867). Huxley named the new dinosaur Euskelosaurus Browni in honour of its discoverer.
