Although discoveries of big bones from Stonesfield are recorded, records from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are sparse. In 1677 Robert Plot, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, described a dinosaur bone from another north Oxfordshire locality. His description of the specimen as the remains of a formerly living animal rather than a formed stone or sport of nature indicates an advance in the understanding of the true nature of fossils. Further bones were discovered in the eighteenth century but naturalists struggled to identify which animals they might have come from. The giant jaw bone purchased by Christopher Pegge in 1797 roused the curiosity of Oxford Professor of Geology William Buckland and stimulated him to acquire more material from the Stonesfield workers. His good working relationship with these individuals gave him access to tacit knowledge gleaned in the course of their work which may provide clues to some of the unanswered questions about the Stonesfield finds.

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