Something the article doesn’t mention is that in 1868 the first reasonably complete dinosaur skeleton, Leidy’s Hadrosaurus foulkii, was mounted for display.
Prior to that, many people scoffed at scientists’ claims that the gigantic bones they were unearthing were those of a previously undescribed and now extinct group of pre-human saurians by quoting the King James bible’s version of Genesis 6:4 - “There were giants in the earth in those days”
So Hull’s hoax was not only a get-rich scheme, I think it was one specifically intended to gull the Bible-thumpers of the day who were utterly flummoxed by Leidy’s Hadrosaur and were desperately seeking reaffirmation of their religious biases.
