A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains, consisting of coloured illustrations selected from Parkinson's "Organic remains of a former world," and Artis's "Antediluvian phytology."Mantell, Gideon Algernon
Science
A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains, consisting of coloured illustrations selected from Parkinson's "Organic remains of a former world," and Artis's "Antediluvian phytology."
Mantell, Gideon Algernon
Paleontology
A specimen very similar to that discovered by Capt. Brickenden,
but of a young individual, was found soon afterwards in a quarry
near Horsham; but I was not allowed the privilege of figuring or
describing it!]
In the course of last summer I obtained a very instructive fragment
of the middle part of the right ramus of the lower jaw of a much
larger Iguanodon, found by Mr. Fowlestone, with some enormous bones
of the extremities, in the Wealden strata of the Isle of Wight. A
portion of the upper jaw (without teeth) was discovered some years
since in Tilgate Forest, and is deposited, with the whole of the
collection I formed at Brighton, in the gallery of organic remains
of the British Museum. These three specimens are the only parts of
the jaws of the Iguanodon, with the exception of a fragment of the
angular bone, that I have had the opportunity of examining. The other
portions of the skeleton hitherto discovered are the following: the
tympanic bone;[134] cervical, dorsal, lumbar, and caudal vertebræ,
and chevron bones; ribs; the iliac bones, and sacrum composed of
six anchylosed vertebræ;[135] the coracoid, scapula and clavicles;
humerus, radius? metacarpals; femur, tibia and fibula, metatarsals
and ungueals. The cranium, carpals, and tarsals, have not been
discovered.
[Footnote 134: This may or may not belong to the Iguanodon: no
tympanic bone has been found in such connexion with other parts of
the skeleton as to afford certain proof that this maxillary element
is referable to the Iguanodon.]
[Footnote 135: In the Megalosaurus, the sacrum consists of five
anchylosed vertebræ.]
With the exception of the assemblage of bones promiscuously grouped
together in a block of _Kentish rag_ (of the greensand formation),
found in a quarry near Maidstone, by Mr. Bensted,[136] a few
connected caudal vertebræ, and two or three instances in which
a femur, tibia, and fibula and some metatarsals, were found in
contiguity, all the bones were isolated. They have been obtained
from the quarries in St. Leonard's and Tilgate Forests, near
Loxwood, Rusper, Horsham, Cuckfield, and Battel; and from the cliffs
at Hastings, and in Sandown, and Brixton, and Brook Bays, on the
southern shore of the Isle of Wight.
[Footnote 136: This most instructive specimen is in a glass-case
on the floor near the window, in the middle room of the Gallery of
Organic Remains in the British Museum. All the Wealden reptilian
remains of a large size, collected by me when residing in Sussex, are
in the upright glass cases in the same apartment.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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