William Buckland. Portrait of William Buckland (1784-1856), British geologist and naturalist. Buckland supported the (now discredited) theories of catastrophism and diluvialism. These theories claimed that geological formations and species extinctions could only occur due to large, sudden disasters. In 1823 he published Reliquiae Diluvianae in which he claimed to have found evidence for the Biblical great flood of Noah. Buckland is credited with the first discovery of dinosaur remains; in 1824 he described the tooth from a Megalosaurus. He also helped to study the fossils collected by Charles Darwin during the voyage of HMS Beagle.