Falconer, Hugh [1808 - 1865]Falconer was one of the preeminent British paleontologist of the day. He worked for the British Museum in London. In 1858 he found some stone tool scrapers in a cave at the Devon coast. Soon afterwards, other stone tools were found in the same area dating from pre-iceage times, thus confirming that mankind had pre-dated the ice age. Falconer was the gentleman who told Richard Owen about a lizard-bird fossil discovered in Solenhofen, Germany. Owen bought the fossil for the British Museum for £450 and dubbed it "Archaeopteryx" during a speech he gave to the Royal Society in 1863. Upon further study it was found that the Archaeopteryx fossil, while at first looking like a bird, had many features found only in lizards (teeth, a bony tail, etc.).
