Samuel H. Beckles was an English 19th century dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 hunter, who collected remains in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

 and the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

. In 1854 he described bird-like trackway

Trackway

A trackway is an ancient route of travel for people or animals. In biology, a trackway can be a set of impressions in the soft earth, usually a set of footprints, left by an animal. A fossil trackway is the fossilized imprint of a trackway. Trackways have been found all over the world...

s that he thought could have been made by dinosaurs, which he later identified as probably those of an Iguanodon

Iguanodon

Iguanodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived roughly halfway between the first of the swift bipedal hypsilophodontids and the ornithopods' culmination in the duck-billed dinosaurs...

 in 1862. In 1857, following the discovery of a mammal jaw at Durlston Bay

Durlston Bay

Durlston Bay is a small bay next to a country park of the same name, just south of the resort of Swanage, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, England...

, he directed a major excavation that became known as 'Beckles' Pit', removing 16 m of overburden

Overburden

Overburden is the material that lies above an area of economic or scientific interest in mining and archaeology; most commonly the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. It is also known as 'waste' or 'spoil'...

 over a 600 square metre area, one of the largest ever scientific excavations. The collection of mammal fossils that resulted is now held at the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

. He discovered the small herbivorous

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

 dinosaur Echinodon

Echinodon

Echinodon meaning "hedgehog tooth" in reference to the spines on its teeth , occasionally known as Saurechinodon, is a genus of small European dinosaur of the early Cretaceous Period , 140 million years ago.-Discovery and species:The type specimen was discovered by Samuel Beckles in the Purbeck...

. The only known species Echinodon becklesii and the dinosaur Becklespinax

Becklespinax

Becklespinax is a genus of large theropod dinosaur based on a type specimen of three tall-spined vertebrae found in 1884 in Sussex, England by the fossil collector Samuel H. Beckles. The fossils are believed to have been from the Early Cretaceous....

were named in his honour.