The cover of Robert Plot's Natural History of Oxfordshire, 1677 (right). Plot's illustration of the lower extremity of a Megalosaurus femur (left).
"Scrotum" is an unusual name given to a theropod dinosaur fossil originally thought to have been from a giant human. In 1677 Robert Plot of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford identified the fossil as that of a human giant. In 1772 Brookes noticed the bone's resemblance to male genitalia, and gave it the name Scrotum humanum. The name is no longer considered scientifically valid: it is a nomen oblitum - a forgotten name not used in the scientific community for more than fifty years after its original proposal. It is also considered invalid because the type specimen has been lost, and the material - including only the distal end of a femur - is not fully diagnosable.
The fossil is thought to have belonged to a Megalosaurus.
References[]
- http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/50776?&print=yes
- http://dml.cmnh.org/1998Jul/msg00866.html
