Richard Owen#Owen and Darwin's theory of evolution

File:Natural History Museum London Jan 2006.jpg in London.]]

Owen became a surgeon's apprentice in 1820 and was appointed to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1826.{{Cite journal |last=Eiland |first=Murray |date=2004 |title=London's Dinosaurs |url=https://www.academia.edu/9454946 |journal=Rock and Gem |volume=34 |issue=11 |pages=60–63 |via=academia.edu}} In 1836, Owen was appointed Hunterian professor at the Royal College, and in 1849, he succeeded William Clift as conservator of the Hunterian Museum. He held the latter office until 1856 when he became superintendent of the natural history department of the British Museum. He then devoted much of his energies to a great scheme for a National Museum of Natural History, which eventually resulted in the removal of the natural history collections of the British Museum to a new building at South Kensington: the British Museum (Natural History) (now the Natural History Museum). He retained office until the completion of this work, in December 1883, when he was made a knight of the Order of the Bath.{{Cite book |title=Eminent persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times|volume= V, 1891–1892|chapter=Sir Richard Owen 1804–1892 Obituary Notice, Monday, December 19, 1892|publisher=Macmillan & Co.|pages=291–299|year=1896|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bKEMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA291 }}

File:Richard_Owen_cottage.jpg

Owen always tended to support orthodox men of science and the status quo. The royal family presented him with the cottage in Richmond Park and Robert Peel put him on the Civil List. In 1843, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1844 he became an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. When this Institute became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851, he joined as a foreign member.{{cite web|url=https://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=authorDetail&aId=PE00002204 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611224932/https://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=authorDetail&aId=PE00002204 |title=Richard Owen (1804 - 1892) |publisher=Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |archive-date=11 June 2019}} In 1845, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1844&year-max=1845&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=12 April 2021|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}

He died at home on 15 December 1892 and is buried in the churchyard at St Andrew's Church, Ham, near Richmond, Surrey.{{cite book|title=Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002|date=July 2006|publisher=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=0-902-198-84-X|url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp2.pdf}}

File:Richard Owen.JPG

While occupied with the cataloguing of the Hunterian collection, Owen did not confine his attention to the preparations before him but also seized every opportunity to dissect fresh subjects. He was allowed to examine all animals that died in London Zoo's gardens and, when the Zoo began to publish scientific proceedings, in 1831, he was the most prolific contributor of anatomical papers. His first notable publication, however, was his Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus (London, 1832), which was soon recognized as a classic. Thenceforth, he continued to make important contributions to every department of comparative anatomy and zoology for a period of over fifty years. In the sponges, Owen was the first to describe the now well-known Venus' Flower Basket or Euplectella (1841, 1857). Among Entozoa, his most noteworthy discovery was that of Trichina spiralis (1835), the parasite infesting the muscles of man in the disease now termed trichinosis (see also, however, Sir James Paget). Of Brachiopoda he made very special studies, which much advanced knowledge and settled the classification that has long been accepted. Among Mollusca, he described not only the pearly nautilus but also Spirula (1850) and other Cephalopoda, both living and extinct, and it was he who proposed the universally-accepted subdivision of this class into the two orders of Dibranchiata and Tetrabranchiata (1832). In 1852 Owen named Protichnites – the oldest footprints found on land.{{cite journal|last1=Owen|first1=Richard|title=Description of the impressions and footprints of the Protichnites from the Potsdam sandstone of Canada|journal=Geological Society of London Quarterly Journal|year=1852|volume=8|issue=1–2|pages=214–225|doi=10.1144/GSL.JGS.1852.008.01-02.26|bibcode=1852QJGS....8..214O |s2cid=130712914|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1602923}} Applying his knowledge of anatomy, he correctly postulated that these Cambrian trackways were made by an extinct type of arthropod, and he did this more than 150 years before any fossils of the animal were found.{{cite journal|last1=Collette|first1=Joseph H.|last2=Hagadorn|first2=James W.|title=Three-Dimensionally Preserved Arthropods from Cambrian Lagerstätten of Quebec and Wisconsin|journal=Journal of Paleontology|volume=84|issue=4|year=2010|pages=646–667|issn=0022-3360|doi=10.1666/09-075.1|s2cid=130064618}}{{cite journal|last1=Collette|first1=Joseph H|last2=Gass|first2=Kenneth C|last3=Hagadorn|first3=James W|title=Protichnites eremita unshelled? Experimental model-based neoichnology and new evidence for a euthycarcinoid affinity for this ichnospecies|journal=Journal of Paleontology|year=2012|volume=83|issue=3|pages=442–454|issn=0022-3360|doi=10.1666/11-056.1|bibcode=2012JPal...86..442C |s2cid=129234373}} Owen envisioned a resemblance of the animal to the living arthropod Limulus.

File:Dinosaur coining of the word in 1841.jpg

Most of his work on reptiles related to the skeletons of extinct forms and his chief memoirs, on British specimens, were reprinted in a connected series in his History of British Fossil Reptiles (4 vols. London 1849–1884). He published the first important general account of the great group of Mesozoic land-reptiles, and he coined the name Dinosauria from Greek δεινός (deinos) "terrible, powerful, wondrous" + σαύρος (sauros) "lizard".{{cite journal|last1=Owen|first1=Richard|title=Report on British fossil reptiles. Part II.|journal=Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Plymouth in July 1841|series=Report of the ... Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1833)|year=1841|pages=60–204|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101076796059;view=1up;seq=102}}; see p. 103. [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101076796059;view=1up;seq=145 From p. 103:] "The combination of such characters ... will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria*. (*Gr. δεινός, fearfully great; σαύρος, a lizard. ... )" Owen used 3 genera to define the dinosaurs: the carnivorous Megalosaurus, the herbivorous Iguanodon and armoured Hylaeosaurus', specimens uncovered in southern England.

With Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, Owen helped create the first life-sized models of dinosaurs as he thought they might have appeared.{{cite news |title=How a Victorian Dinosaur Park Became a Time Capsule of Early Paleontology |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-a-victorian-dinosaur-park-became-a-time-capsule-of-early-paleontology-180982799/ |access-date=1 March 2025 |magazine=Smithsonian|quote=The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are the world's first attempt to model prehistoric animals at full scale.}} Some models were initially created for the Great Exhibition of 1851 held in London's Hyde Park, but 33 were eventually produced when the Crystal Palace was relocated to Crystal Palace Park, in south London. Owen famously hosted a dinner for 21 prominent men of science inside the hollow concrete Iguanodon on New Year's Eve 1853. However, in 1849, a few years before his death in 1852, Gideon Mantell had realised that Iguanodon, of which he was the discoverer, was not a heavy, pachyderm-like animal, as Owen was proposing, but had slender forelimbs.{{cite book |last=Mantell |first=Gideon A. |title= Petrifications and their teachings: or, a handbook to the gallery of organic remains of the British Museum. |year=1851 |publisher=H. G. Bohn |location=London |oclc= 8415138}}

File:Camel Skeleton - Richard Owen - On the Anatomy of Vertebrates (1866).jpg's skeleton]]

Owen was granted right of first refusal on any freshly dead animal at the London Zoo. His wife once arrived home to find the carcass of a newly deceased rhinoceros in her front hallway.

At the same time, Sir Thomas Mitchell's discovery of fossil bones, in New South Wales, provided material for the first of Owen's long series of papers on the extinct mammals of Australia, which were eventually reprinted in book-form in 1877. He described Diprotodon (1838) and Thylacoleo (1859), and extinct species kangaroos and wombats of gigantic size. Most fossil material found in Australia and New Zealand was initially sent to England for expert examination, and with the assistance of the local collectors Owen became the first authority on the palaeontology of the region.{{cite book |last1=Vickers-Rich |first1=P. |title=Wildlife of Gondwana |year=1993 |publisher=Reed |location=NSW |isbn=0730103153 |pages=49–51}} While occupied with so much material from abroad, Owen was also busily collecting facts for an exhaustive work on similar fossils from the British Isles and, in 1844–1846, he published his History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds, which was followed by many later memoirs, notably his Monograph of the Fossil Mammalia of the Mesozoic Formations (Palaeont. Soc., 1871). One of his latest publications was a little work entitled Antiquity of Man as deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton during Excavations of the Docks at Tilbury (London, 1884).

Sometime during the 1840s Owen came to the conclusion that species arise as the result of some sort of evolutionary process. He believed that there were a total of six possible mechanisms: Parthenogenesis, prolonged development, premature birth, congenital malformations, Lamarckian atrophy, Lamarckian hypertrophy and transmutation, of which he thought transmutation was the least likely.

File:Richard Owen 1856.jpg

Science historian Evelleen Richards has argued that Owen was likely sympathetic to developmental theories of evolution, but backed away from publicly proclaiming them after the critical reaction that had greeted the anonymously published evolutionary book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844 (it was revealed only decades later that the book had been authored by publisher Robert Chambers). Owen had been criticised for his own evolutionary remarks in his On the Nature of Limbs in 1849.{{cite journal |last=Richards |first=Evellen |year=1987 |title=A question of property rights: Richard Owen's evolutionism reassessed |journal=British Journal for the History of Science |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=129–171 |jstor=4026305 |doi=10.1017/S0007087400023724 |s2cid=170268846}} At the end of On the Nature of Limbs, Owen suggested that humans ultimately evolved from fish as the result of natural laws,{{cite book |last=Owen |first=Richard |editor=Amundson, Ron |date=January 2007 |orig-year=1849 |title=On the Nature of Limbs |quote=A Discourse, with a preface by Brian Hall, and essays by Ron Amundson, Kevin Padian, Mary Winsor, and Jennifer Coggon. |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago, IL |isbn=978-0-226-64194-2 |lccn=2007009519 |page=86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ftvbuluG7xQC}} which resulted in Owen being criticized in the Manchester Spectator for denying that species such as humans were created by God.

File:dinornis1387.jpg skeleton in 1879]]

Owen, as president-elect of the British Association, announced his authoritative anatomical studies of primate brains, stating that the human brain had structures that ape brains did not and that therefore humans were a separate sub-class, starting a dispute which was subsequently satirised as the Great Hippocampus Question.{{cite journal |last=Gross |first=Charles G. |year=1993 |title=Hippocampus minor and man's place in nature: a case study in the social construction of neuroanatomy |periodical=Hippocampus |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=407–413 |doi=10.1002/hipo.450030403 |pmid=8269033 |s2cid=15172043 }} Owen's main argument was that humans have much larger brains for their body size than other mammals including the great apes.

In 1862 (and later occasions) Thomas Huxley took the opportunity to arrange demonstrations of ape brain anatomy (e.g. at the BA meeting, where William Flower performed the dissection). Visual evidence of the supposedly missing structures (posterior cornu and hippocampus minor) was used, in effect, to indict Owen for perjury: Owen had argued that the absence of those structures in apes was connected with the lesser size to which the ape brains grew, but he then conceded that a poorly developed version might be construed as present without preventing him from arguing that brain size was still the major way of distinguishing apes and humans.

File:Richard Owen with his granddaughter.jpg

Huxley's campaign ran over two years and was devastatingly successful at persuading the overall scientific community, with each "slaying" being followed by a recruiting drive for the Darwinian cause. The spite lingered. While Owen had argued that humans were distinct from apes by virtue of having large brains, Huxley said that racial diversity blurred any such distinction. In his paper criticising Owen, Huxley directly states:

: ... "if we place {{sc|A}}, the European brain, {{sc|B}}, the Bosjesman brain, and {{sc|C}}, the orang brain, in a series, the differences between {{sc|A}} and {{sc|B}}, so far as they have been ascertained, are of the same nature as the chief of those between {{sc|B}} and {{sc|C}}".{{cite wikisource | last1=Huxley | first1=Thomas H. | author-link=Thomas Henry Huxley | title=On the zoological relations of man with the lower animals | wslink=Natural History Review/Series 2/Volume 1/Number 1/On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals | work=Natural History Review | series=2 | volume=1 | number=1 | year=1861 | pages=67–84 | firsticon=yes | noicon=yes }}

Owen countered Huxley by saying the brains of all human races were really of similar size and intellectual ability, and that the fact that humans had brains that were twice the size of large apes like male gorillas, even though humans had much smaller bodies, made humans distinguishable.

File:Statue of Richard Owen, Natural History Museum, London.jpg, London.]]

He was the first director in Natural History Museum in London and his statue was in the main hall there until 2009, when it was replaced with a statue of Darwin.

A bust of Owen by Alfred Gilbert (1896) is held in the Hunterian Museum, London.

A species of Central American lizard, Diploglossus owenii, was named in his honour by French herpetologists André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron in 1839.{{cite book |author1=Beolens, Bo |author2=Watkins, Michael |author3=Grayson, Michael |year=2011 |title=The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles |place=Baltimore, MD |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=978-1-4214-0135-5 |page=198 "Owen, R."}}

The Sir Richard Owen Wetherspoons pub in central Lancaster is named in his honour.{{cite web |title=The Sir Richard Owen Lancaster |website=jdwetherspoon.com |publisher=J.D. Wetherspoon |url=https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pub-histories/england/lancashire/the-sir-richard-owen-lancaster |access-date=14 June 2021}}

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Owen has been described by some as a malicious, dishonest and hateful individual. He has been described in one biography as being a "social experimenter with a penchant for sadism. Addicted to controversy and driven by arrogance and jealousy". Deborah Cadbury stated that Owen possessed an "almost fanatical egoism with a callous delight in savaging his critics." An Oxford University professor once described Owen as "a damned liar. He lied for God and for malice".{{cite web |title=Rocky road: Sir Richard Owen |date=28 May 2011 |website=Strangescience.net |url=http://www.strangescience.net/owen.htm |access-date=17 September 2011}} Gideon Mantell said it was "a pity a man so talented should be so dastardly and envious". Richard Broke Freeman described him as "the most distinguished vertebrate zoologist and palaeontologist ... but a most deceitful and odious man".{{cite book |last=Freeman |first=R.B. |author-link=Richard Broke Freeman |date=2007 |title=Charles Darwin: A companion |url=http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A27b&pageseq=1 |publisher=Darwin Online}} Charles Darwin stated that "No one fact tells so strongly against Owen ... as that he has never reared one pupil or follower."{{cite book |last=Darwin |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Darwin |date=2020 |title=More Letters of Charles Darwin |publisher=Library of Alexandria |page=153 |isbn=9781465549129}}

File:Richard Owen, riding his hobby.jpg of Owen "riding his hobby", by Frederick Waddy (1873).]]

Owen famously credited himself and Georges Cuvier with the discovery of the Iguanodon, completely excluding any credit for the original discoverer of the dinosaur, Gideon Mantell. This was not the first or last time Owen would falsely claim a discovery as his own. It has also been suggested by some authors that Owen even used his influence in the Royal Society to ensure that many of Mantell's research papers were never published. Owen was finally dismissed from the Royal Society's Zoological Council for plagiarism.{{cite book |last=Bryson |first=Bill |author-link=Bill Bryson |date=2016 |title=A Short History of Nearly Everything |publisher=Black Swan |page=123 |isbn=9781784161859}}

Another reason for his criticism of the Origin, some historians claim, was that Owen felt upstaged by Darwin and supporters such as Huxley, and his judgment was clouded by jealousy. Owen in Darwin's opinion was "spiteful, extremely malignant, clever; the Londoners say he is mad with envy because my book is so talked about".{{cite book |first=Charles |last=Darwin |date=1 July 2001 |title=More Letters of Charles Darwin |volume=1 |quote=A record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters. |editor-first1=Francis |editor-last1=Darwin |editor-first2=Albert Charles |editor-last2=Seward |via=Project Gutenberg |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/1mlcd10.txt}}

File:Carlo Pelligrini-Richard Owen Old Bones.jpg, March 1873]]

Owen also resorted to the same subterfuge he used against Mantell, writing another anonymous article in the Edinburgh Review in April 1860. In the article, Owen was critical of Darwin for not offering many new observations, and heaped praise (in the third person) upon himself, while being careful not to associate any particular comment with his own name.{{cite web |title=Darwin on the Origin of Species |website=Darwin.gruts.com |url=http://darwin.gruts.com/docs/er-1860-04/ |access-date=17 September 2011}} Owen did praise, however, the Origin's description of Darwin's work on insect behaviour and pigeon breeding as "real gems".{{cite journal |author=Owen, Richard (published anonymously) |date=April 1860 |title=Darwin on the Origin of Species |journal=Edinburgh Review |volume=111 |pages=487–532}}

Owen was also a party to the threat to end government funding of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew botanical collection (see Attacks on Hooker and Kew), orchestrated by Acton Smee Ayrton:

:"There is no doubt that rivalry resulted between the British Museum, where there was the very important Herbarium of the Department of Botany, and Kew. The rivalry at times became extremely personal, especially between Hooker and Owen ... At the root was Owen's feeling that Kew should be subordinate to the British Museum (and to Owen) and should not be allowed to develop as an independent scientific institution with the advantage of a great botanic garden."{{cite book |author=Turrill, W.B. |year=1963 |title=Joseph Dalton Hooker |publisher=Nelson |place=London, UK |page=90}}

Owen's lost scientific standing was not due solely to his underhanded dealings with colleagues; it was also due to serious errors of scientific judgement that were discovered and publicised. A fine example was his decision to classify man in a separate subclass of the Mammalia (see Man's place in nature). In this, Owen had no supporters at all. Also, his unwillingness to come off the fence concerning evolution became increasingly damaging to his reputation as time went on. Owen continued working after his official retirement at the age of 79, but he never recovered the good opinions he had garnered in his younger days.{{cite book |author=Desmond, A. |year=1982 |title=Archetypes and Ancestors: Paleontology in Victorian London 1850–1875 |publisher=Muller |place=London, UK}}{{cite web |title=Sir Richard Owen: The archetypal villain |year=2001 |website=Darwin.gruts.com |url=http://darwin.gruts.com/articles/2001/owen/ |access-date=17 September 2011}}

• Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus (1832)
• Odontography (1840–1845)
• Description of the Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (1842)
• On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (1848)
• History of British Fossil Reptiles (4 vols., 1849–1884)
• On the Nature of Limbs (1849)
• Palæontology or a Systematic Summary of Extinct Animals and Their Geological Relations (1860)
• Archaeopteryx (1863)
• Anatomy of Vertebrates (1866) Image from
• Available at Google Books:
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=BeMOAAAAYAAJ Volume I, Fishes and Reptiles]
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=ooDbkHz4FRwC Volume II, Birds and Mammals]
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=swgAAAAAQAAJ Volume III, Mammals]
• Memoir of the Dodo (1866) Full book on Wiki commons
• Monograph of the Fossil Mammalia of the Mesozoic Formations (1871)
• Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa (1876)
• Antiquity of Man as deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton during Excavations of the Docks at Tilbury (1884)

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{{Refbegin|2|indent=yes}}

• {{cite book|last=Anonymous|others=Illustrated by Frederick Waddy|title=Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day

|chapter=Professor Owen |url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cartoon_portraits_and_biographical_sketches_of_men_of_the_day/Professor_Owen

|access-date=6 January 2011|year=1873|publisher=Tinsley Brothers|location=London|pages=36–37}}

• {{cite book |author= Anonymous |chapter= SIR RICHARD OWEN (1804-1892) (Obituary Notice, Monday, December 19, 1892) |title= Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from The Times|year=1896 |publisher=Macmillan and Co., Limited |place=London |pages=291–299 |volume= V (1891-1892)|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/eminentpersonsbi05timeiala/page/291 |access-date=7 March 2019 |via= Internet Archive }}
• Amundson, Ron, (2007), The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo. New York: Cambridge University of Press.
• {{cite book |last=Bryson |first=Bill |author-link=Bill Bryson |title= A Short History of Nearly Everything |year=2003 |publisher= Doubleday |location=London |isbn=978-0-7679-0817-7 |title-link=A Short History of Nearly Everything }}
• {{cite book |last=Cadbury |first=Deborah |author-link=Deborah Cadbury |title=Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science |url=https://archive.org/details/terriblelizard00debo |url-access=registration |year=2000 |publisher=Henry Holt |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8050-7087-3 }}
• {{cite journal |author=Collette, Joseph H., Gass, Kenneth C. & Hagadorn, James W. |year=2012 |title=Protichnites eremita unshelled? Experimental model-based neoichnology and new evidence for a euthycarcinoid affinity for this ichnospecies |journal=Journal of Paleontology |volume=86 |pages=442–454 |doi=10.1666/11-056.1 |issue=3|bibcode=2012JPal...86..442C |s2cid=129234373 }}
• {{cite journal |author1=Collette, Joseph H. |author2=Hagadorn, James W. |name-list-style=amp |year=2010 |title=Three-dimensionally preserved arthropods from Cambrian Lagerstatten of Quebec and Wisconsin |journal=Journal of Paleontology |volume=84 |pages=646–667 |doi=10.1666/09-075.1 |issue=4|s2cid=130064618 }}
• Cosans, Christopher, (2009), Owen's Ape & Darwin's Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Desmond, Adrian & Moore, James (1991). Darwin. London: Michael Joseph, the Penguin Group. {{ISBN|0-7181-3430-3}}.
• Darwin, Francis, editor (1887). The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter (7th Edition). London: John Murray.
• Darwin, Francis & Seward, A. C., editors (1903). More letters of Charles Darwin: A record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters. London: John Murray.
• {{cite wikisource | last1=Huxley | first1=Thomas H. | author-link=Thomas Henry Huxley | title=On the zoological relations of man with the lower animals | wslink=Natural History Review/Series 2/Volume 1/Number 1/On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals | work=Natural History Review | series=2 | volume=1 | number=1 | year=1861 | pages=67–84 | firsticon=yes | noicon=yes }}
• {{cite journal |author=Owen, Richard |year=1852 |title=Description of the impressions and footprints of the Protichnites from the Potsdam sandstone of Canada |journal=Geological Society of London Quarterly Journal |volume=8 |issue=1–2 |pages=214–225 |doi=10.1144/GSL.JGS.1852.008.01-02.26|bibcode=1852QJGS....8..214O |s2cid=130712914 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1602923 }}
• {{cite journal| last = Owen|first = Richard (published anonymously)| author-link = Richard Owen|date=April 1860

| title = Darwin on the Origin of Species| journal = Edinburgh Review| volume = 111| pages = 487–532

| url = http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A30&pageseq=1| access-date = 26 July 2010

}}

• {{cite book|last = Owen|first = Richard|author-link = Richard Owen|editor = Amundson, Ron|date=January 2007| orig-year = 1849|title = On the Nature of Limbs: A Discourse, with a preface by Brian Hall, and essays by Ron Amundson, Kevin Padian, Mary Winsor, and Jennifer Coggon.|publisher = University of Chicago Press|location = Chicago|isbn = 978-0-226-64194-2|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ftvbuluG7xQC|lccn = 2007009519}}Cosans, 2009, pp. 108–111
• {{cite book|last = Owen|first = Richard (Owen's grandson)| year = 1894|title = The Life of Richard Owen|publisher = J. Murray|location = London|volume = 1|url = https://archive.org/details/liferichardowen00owengoog

| isbn = 978-0-8478-1188-5|lccn = 03026819}}

• {{cite book|last = Owen|first = Richard (Owen's grandson)|year = 1894|title = The Life of Richard Owen|publisher = J. Murray|location = London| volume = 2|url=https://archive.org/details/liferichardowen01owengoog

| isbn = 978-0-8478-1188-5|lccn = 03026819}}

• Richards, Evellen, (1987), "A Question of Property Rights: Richard Owen's Evolutionism Reassessed", British Journal for the History of Science, 20: 129–171.
• Rupke, Nicolaas, (1994), Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Shindler, Karolyn. Richard Owen: the greatest scientist you've never heard of, The Telegraph, 16 December 2010. [https://web.archive.org/web/20101210082405/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/evolution/8185977/Richard-Owen-the-greatest-scientist-youve-never-heard-of.html (accessed 16 December 2010)]

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• {{Gutenberg author |id=58234 |name=Richard Owen}}

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Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath

Category:Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Category:Non-Darwinian evolution

Category:People educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School

Category:People from Lancaster, Lancashire

Category:Philosophical theists

Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal

Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)

Category:Royal Medal winners

Category:Wollaston Medal winners

Category:19th-century British biologists

Category:People who have lived in Richmond Park

Category:Burials at St Andrew's Church, Ham

Category:Theistic evolutionists

Category:People involved in race and intelligence controversies