Home > Gideon Mantell

Gideon Mantell was born in Lewes, Sussex. He was a dedicated obstetrician with a passion for geology. He ran a country medical practice in Lewes, and spent his free time pursuing geology. The fossils Mantell had collected in Sussex were from the chalk downlands covering the county. The chalk is part of the Upper Cretaceous Period, and the fossils it contains are marine in origin. But by 1819 Mantell had begun acquiring fossils from a quarry at Whiteman's Green, near Cuckfield. These included the remains of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems at a time when all the known fossil remains from Cretaceous England were marine in origin. He named the new strata the Strata of Tilgate Forest, after an historical wooded area, and it was later shown to belong to the Lower Cretaceous.

By 1820Events January 1 Constitutionalist military insurrection at Cadiz leads to summoning of Spanish parliament ( March 7) and restoration of 1812 Constitution ( March 8) by king Ferdinand VII. January 29 George the Prince Regent becomes king George IV of the, he had started to find very large bones at Cuckfield, even larger than those discovered by William BucklandWilliam Buckland ( March 12, 1784 August 24, 1856) was an English geologist and palaeontologist. Buckland was born at Axminster in Devon. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1813 he was appointed reader in mineralogy in succession to John Kid at Stonesfield in OxfordshireOxfordshire (abbreviated Oxon from Latin Oxonia is a county in South East England, bordering on Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. It is divided into five local government districts Oxford, Cherwell,. Then in 1822, shortly before finishing his first book (The Fossils of South Downs or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex), he found several large teeth (although some historiansHistory is often used as a generic term for information about the past, such as in "geologic history of the Earth". When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of human societies. The term histor contend that they were in fact discovered by his wife), the origin of which he could not identify. Mantell showed the teeth to other scientists, but they were dismissed as belonging to a fishAtlantic herring, Clupea harengus one of the most abundant species in the world Photo A fish is a poikilothermic (cold-blooded) water-dwelling vertebrate with gills. There are over 27,000 species of fish, making them the most diverse group of vertebrates. or mammalSubclass Monotremata Monotremata Subclass Marsupialia Didelphimorphia Paucituberculata Microbiotheria Dasyuromorphia Peramelemorphia Notoryctemorphia Diprotodontia Subclass Placentalia Xenarthra Dermoptera Desmostylia Scandentia Primates Rodentia Lagomorp, and from a more recent rock layer than the other Tilgate Forest fossils. The eminent FrenchThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. anatomistAnatomy (from the Greek anatome from ana-temnein to cut up), is the branch of biology that deals with the structure and organization of living things; thus there is animal anatomy ( zootomy) and plant anatomy ( phytonomy). The major branches of anatomy in Georges Cuvier identified the teeth as those of a rhinoceros. Mantell was convinced that the teeth had come from the Mesozoic strata, and finally recognized that they resembled those of the iguana, but twenty times larger. He surmised that the owner of the remains must have been at least sixty feet in length.

He tried in vain to convince his peers that the fossils were from Mesozoic strata by carefully studying rock layers. Richard Owen famously disputed Mantell's assertion by claiming that the teeth were of mammalian origins. Years later, Mantell had acquired enough fossil evidence to show that the dinosaur's forelimbs were much shorter than its hind legs therefore ruling out any mammal. Mantell went on to demonstrate that fossil vertebrae Owen had attributed to a variety of different species all belonged to Iguanodon.

In 1825, Mantell published Notice on the Iguanodon, a Newly Discovered Fossil Reptile, from the Sandstone of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex. The paper was presented at a meeting of the Royal Society, and was met with acclaim. As a result, Mantell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and an honorary member of the Institute of Paris . He was also awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London and a Royal medal by the Royal Society.

In 1833 Mantell relocated to Brighton, but his medical practice suffered and he was almost rendered destitute but for the town's council who promptly transformed his house into a museum.

In 1839, Mary Mantell left her husband. That same year, Gideon's youngest son Walter emigrated to New Zealand.

The museum in Brighton ultimately failed as a result of Mantell's habit of waiving the entrance fee, and finally destitute, Mantell sold the entire collection.

Mantell suffered a terrible carriage accident and was left with a debilitating spinal injury. Despite being bent over with crippling deformity and in constant pain, he continued to work with fossilized reptiles, and published a number of scientific books and papers until his death.

In 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium (the drug he used to alleviate his pain) and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. His postmortem showed that he had in fact been suffering from scoliosis. Richard Owen, his one-time nemesis, had a section of Mantell's spine removed, pickled and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. There it sat until World War II when it was lost, presumably destroyed, during a German bombing raid.

In 2000, in commemoration of Mantell's discovery and his contribution to the science of paleontology, The Mantell Monument was unveiled at Whiteman's Green , Cuckfield. The monument has been confirmed as the location of the Iguanodon fossils Mantell first described in 1822.