Gideon Mantell

Gideon Algernon Mantell ( born February 3, 1790 in Lewes, Sussex, England; † November 10, 1852 in Clapham, Surrey ) was an English physician, geologist and paleontologist, which is attributed to have been the first fossils as originating from dinosaurs.

Life and work

Gideon Mantell was born in Lewes, Sussex and spent the time gave him his doctor's office, with geological research. He collected primarily in Sussex fossils of marine animals, which - as we now know - from the Early Cretaceous period came. When he started with the collection of fossils from the locality Whiteman 's Green, near Cuckfield in 1819, but this came from the early Cretaceous period and came from land and from freshwater organisms. Among his discoveries Cuckfield in 1820 there were also very large bones that even surpassed in size, the William Buckland had discovered in Stonesfield, Oxfordshire. Just before he completed his first book "The Fossils of the South Downs or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex ," he also found some very large teeth whose origin he could not explain. The often traditional version that he owed the locality for these extraordinary remains of his wife, Mary, who stood him for the illustration of his collection on hand to help, is not occupied. Scientists associated Mantell extraordinary finds fish or mammals from a substantial recent period. Even the famous French scientist Georges Cuvier identified one of the teeth first uses of that discipline " comparative anatomy " as upper incisor of a rhino. Mantell was, however, confident that the worn teeth, notches and had pointed to a herbivorous species, originated from the Mesozoic and that those of an iguana (Iguana ) were similar, except that this animal was 20 times as large. Georges Cuvier soon joined Mantell's opinion on, after he had carried out the examination of the entire fossil teeth and the finds attributed to the early existence of an unknown giant lizard. Mantell named his discovery at first " Iguanosaurus ", but soon changed it in the name Iguanodon ( iguana tooth) to.

The most violent contradiction that Mantell's views were met with, came from the highly respected scientist Richard Owen, who represented strongly the view that these teeth could only have come from a mammal. Over the following years Mantell collected more fossils to prove, firstly, that the front legs of this dinosaur were much shorter than the hind legs and could therefore belong to any extant species and on the other, to show that the fossils Owen different vertebrates then assigned, all were part of the Iguanadon.

1825 Mantell published its Notice on the Iguanodon, a Newly Discovered Fossil Reptile, from the Sandstone of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex, which he presented for the first time at a meeting of the Royal Society with success. As a result, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and Honorary Member of the Institut de Paris. He was also awarded the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London.

1833 Mantell moved to Brighton, the economic success of his medical practice but suffered from the move. Decorated in Brighton museum he his fossils was also a financial failure, as he regularly waived entrance fee, so that Mantell was forced, because of its financial constraints his collection for sale. 1839 left him his wife and his youngest son Walter Mantell emigrated to New Zealand. Mantell moved to London and tried a new practice in Clapham build, while he used his favorite daughter Hannah. Her death in 1840 hit him hard.

Crippled by a serious accident with a coach and in constant pain, he sat still continued his scientific work and published until his death in a number of scientific publications. In 1852 he died of an overdose of morphine, which he normally used as a painkiller. His deformed spine was removed at autopsy and issued until 1969 at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In 2000, in memory of Mantell's discovery and its performance for palaeontology in Whiteman 's Green, Cuckfield, inaugurated a monument in his honor.

Works

• The Fossils of the South Downs. Lupton Relfe, London 1822.
• Illustrations of the Geogology of Sussex. Lupton Relfe, London 1827.
• Thoughts on a Pebble. Reeve, Benham & Reeve, London, 1849.