Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14060

    Jaw fossils and Hylaeosaurus

    Date
    1832
    Creator
    Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790 - 1852, British) , Geologist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (print): 240mm
    width (print): 192mm
    Subject
    Earth Sciences
       > Palaeontology
          > Fossils
    Content object
    nature
       > fossil
    Description
    Rough sketches of fossils collected by Gideon Mantell. Three figures of partial saurian or crocodile jawbones. With a sketch of his near complete holotype fossil of the ankylosaur Hylaeosaurus armatus, from the Tilgate Forest, Sussex, England, one of the earliest dinosaurs to be identified.

    The drawings appear in a letter from Gideon Mantell to William Buckland, postmarked 15 November 1832, In the accompanying descriptive text, Mantell wrote: ‘I send sketches of my two chalk specimens which Cuvier saw (as well as the one from Hornsey) and allowed that they were the posterior extremities of the lower jaw of a saurian…’

    Mantell continued: ‘I have sketched a made plan of my great specimen it will only serve to give an idea of the relative situation of the bones. I cannot determine upon the spinous processes. I have chevron bones of Iguanodon & Crocodile - but these are not like them…’ The specimen was eventually described and named as a new species in the book The geology of the south-east of England, by Gideon Mantell (London, Longmans, 1833).

    Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790–1852), British geologist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1825.
    Associated place
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       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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