130 Million Year Old Mistake

Although Iguanodon lived 130 million years ago, we pick up in 1822, when somebody found some teeth in Sussex, in South East England. Now, nobody can be sure who found the teeth, initially it was said that Mary Ann Mantell found them along a roadside, later her husband, Gideon Mantell, a fossil hunter, claimed it was he who found them. This was one of the first dinosaurs ever discovered and recognized as something important.

In 1834 more fossils were discovered in Maidstone, Kent, these were of the same species and were used in the process of understanding what the animal looked like.

However the mistake took place in understanding the creature and reassembling it. Because the teeth looked a little like massive Iguana teeth, not only was it given the name Iguanodon, but its remains were assembled so it looked more or less like a giant lizard. It was placed on four legs, given a broad head and a rather lumbering appearance. Most humiliating of all, its thumb was placed on the tip of its nose so as to be some sort of cute horn.

Iguanodon statue, if you look closely you can see the horn.

The great fossil hunt was on, and bones were suddenly being excavated all over the place. Statues were made and artists renderings were anything but accurate. Some even showed prehistoric animals to features that had not even been discovered, one drawing showed Iguanodon to have an extremely lengthy tail despite the fact that fossil evidence indicated a proportionately shorter tail.

Artists rendering showing a much too long tail and incorrect posture, as well as the nose horn.

Much of the cause of errors in early dinosaur reconstruction was due to the religious thinking of the time. A much better funded scientist, (who was also a firm creationist) Richard Owen, insisted that these animals had to have been mammalian, and gave them mammalian attributes, including posture.

Iguanodon hand with the thumb correctly where it belongs.

Thankfully other scientists were less ignorant and worked hard to learn new things rather than simply twisting facts to accommodate or explain the new discoveries. Shortly before his death, Mr Mantell came to realize that Iguanodon was not a heavy mammoth like creature, but rather was a slender, more refined animal. It was a herbivore who probably stood erect most of the time, but could bend down to eat when it needed to. It had spiky thumbs, not a horn on its head, and it could run at speeds of 25 kilometers per hour.

Iguanodon as he should have been all along.

Other Reading

Most Prehistoric Animals were Not Dinosaurs

The Whimsical Dinosaurs of Drumheller