Lecturer removes photo of testicles from lecture slides after complaints

A lecturer was made to remove a picture of human testicles from a presentation on the first dinosaur fossil to be given a scientific name after complaints from students.

An unnamed lecturer at the University of Portsmouth adjusted his lecture about the leg bone of the Megalosaurus following the outrage.

An illustration of the fossil given to Robert Plot, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in the 17th century looks similar to a human scrotum.

In 1763, physician Richard Brookes named it Scrotum humanum, leading it to be the first valid binomial name (having two names) given to an extinct dinosaur.

The dinosaur fossil was renamed in the 19th century.

To illustrate the topic the lecturer showed his class of third-year students a photograph of actual human testicles.

A Freedom of Information request by the BBC revealed complaints by students led to the lecturer removing this photo from his talk.

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A University of Portsmouth spokesman said: “We can confirm that a complaint was made about the image used in the presentation.

“Following that complaint the image of the human testicles was removed.”