Gideon Mantell

Gideon Algernon Mantell MRCS FRS (3 February 1790 – 10 November 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and palaeontologist. His attempts to reconstruct the structure and life of Iguanodon began the scientific study of dinosaurs: in 1822 he was responsible for the discovery (and the eventual identification) of the first fossil teeth, and later much of the skeleton, of Iguanodon. Mantell’s work on the Cretaceous of southern England was also important.

Inspired by Mary Anning‘s sensational discovery of a fossilised animal resembling a huge crocodile (later identified as an ichthyosaur) at Lyme Regis in Dorset, Mantell became passionately interested in the study of the fossilised animals and plants found in his area. The fossils he had collected from the region, near The Weald in Sussex, were from the chalk downlands covering the county. The chalk is part of the Upper Cretaceous System and the fossils it contains are marine in origin. But by 1819, Mantell had begun acquiring fossils from a quarry, at Whitemans Green, near Cuckfield. These included the remains of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, at a time when all the known fossil remains from Cretaceous England, hitherto, 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 1820, he had started to find very large bones at Cuckfield, even larger than those discovered by William Buckland, at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire. Then, in 1822, shortly before finishing his first book (The Fossils of South Downs), his wife found several large teeth (although some historians contend that they were in fact discovered by himself), the origin of which he could not ascertain. In 1821 Mantell planned his next book on the geology of Sussex. It was an immediate success with two hundred subscribers including King George IV at Carlton House Palace, who wrote a letter stating, “His majesty is pleased to command that his name should be placed at the head of the subscription list for four copies.”^{[This quote needs a citation]}

How the king heard of Mantell is unknown, but Mantell’s response is known. Galvanised and encouraged, Mantell showed the teeth to other scientists but they were dismissed as belonging to a fish or mammal and from a more recent rock layer than the other Tilgate Forest fossils. The eminent French anatomist, Georges Cuvier, identified the teeth as those of a rhinoceros.

Although according to Charles Lyell, Cuvier made this statement after a late party and apparently had some doubts when reconsidering the matter when he awoke, fresh in the morning. “The next morning he told me that he was confident that it was something quite different.” Strangely, this change of opinion did not make it back to Britain where Mantell was mocked for his error. Mantell was still convinced that the teeth had come from the Mesozoic strata and finally recognised that they resembled those of the iguana, but were twenty times larger. He surmised that the owner of the remains must have been at least 60 feet (18 metres) in length.

On 10 November 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. His post-mortem by William Adams showed that he had been suffering from severe lumbar scoliosis, leading to the Adams Forward Bend Test as a diagnostic tool. A section of Mantell’s spine was removed, preserved and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It remained there until 1969 when it was destroyed due to lack of space.^[19]

Mantell’s surgery, on the south side of Clapham Common, is now a dental surgery.

At the time of his death Mantell was credited with discovering four of the five genera of dinosaurs then known.^[20]

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

He is buried at West Norwood Cemetery within a sarcophagus attributed to Amon Henry Wilds^[18] that replicates the sanctuary of Natakamani‘s Temple of Amun. (The name ammonite is, coincidentally, derived from Amun.)

Mantell booklet

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Mantell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Mantell

Cuckfield Museum

Cuckfield Society

Cuckfield Connections

Mantell Monument