ABSTRACT
In the 1820s, five large egos personified by four scholars and an amateur from outside academia made significant contributions to, and reputations from, the study of five large fossil reptiles. The outsider, Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) rose through the class system and overcame scientific prejudices to make his name by describing Iguanodon. It was his wife Mary Ann Mantell (1795–1869), however, who truly discovered the first wedge-shaped teeth which enabled the creature's herbivorous nature to be determined.
Her famous country walk is verified by a credible newspaper account which gives further details regarding the site and probable date of the find. The Mantells did not discover Megalosaurus; however, they obtained undiagnostic pieces of saurians that were much later to be identified as completely unrelated theropod dinosaurs. The general similarity of these fossils to the ‘Stonesfield Animal’ prompted William Buckland (1784–1856) to publish what is regarded in retrospect as the first scientific description of a dinosaur. Evidence is provided which shows that the ‘fossilist’ Richard Anning (1766–1810) of Lyme Regis had an apprentice, and was a more serious vendor of fossils than has hitherto been realised. William Conybeare (1787–1857) was directly involved in the naming of most of these reptiles, excelling in his description of Plesiosaurus and, with fellow savant Henry De la Beche (1796–1855), elucidating the detailed anatomical characters of Ichthyosaurus. Working in Paris, Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) can be seen as a highly influential and generous collaborator who offered his opinions freely to the English geologists. He correctly interpreted the general taxonomic identity of the enigmatic animals ultimately named as Iguanodon and Megalosaurus.
This paper presents new data regarding these pioneers in ‘saurian’ research, with a personal and retrospective overview of the politics in palaeontology, a competitive science.