Gideon Mantell's Tooth

And here it is!  In the last month, I read the book The Dinosaur Hunters  by Deborah Cadbury, which is an account of the first dinosaur discoveries in the UK in the early 19th century. It is also an account of the rivalry between two of the key figures involved in finding and bringing to public attention the ancient remains. The first, Gideon Mantell, was a provincial doctor who, in his spare time, collected fossils from quarries in the south of England.  He was responsible for finding the remains of - and theorising the existence of - three of the first dinosaurs, including the Iguanodon. Due to his job and his lack of financial backing his investigations were piecemeal and slow to gain widespread acceptance.  His younger and better-financed rival was Richard Owen, who coined the name 'dinosaur' and eventually established the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Although Gideon Mantell was one of the first people to find these remains and start to uncover pre-historic life, he does not quite have the reputation of Owen. Instead, his scientific pursuits eventually cost him his marriage, his practice and, eventually, his health.  

Apart from the sheer interest and significance of this tale, which is told in a lively and engaging way by Cadbury, there is a New Zealand connection to this story.  Gideon Mantell's son, Walter, was one of the first British immigrants to New Zealand, arriving in Wellington on the New Zealand Company ship Oriental in January 1840, before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. While maintaining an interest in natural history, Walter Mantell was also appointed as a commissioner charged with extinguishing Ngai Tahu native title to large parts of the South Island, and setting aside paltry reserves for them to live on.  He was subsequently responsible for the purchase of many large blocks of land. Unlike many early colonists, Walter Mantell was later in his life to be haunted by the broken promises that he and others had made to Ngai Tahu and attempted to rectify them.  In an attempt to ensure these promises would be kept, Walter Mantell sought political office, serving briefly as Native Minister in 1861,  before resigning as the promises remained unfulfilled.

Perhaps more fulfilling for Walter Mantell were his natural history pursuits in the new colony. Not only was he in regular communication with his father, but also with the geologist Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin.  He was also able to send his father bones from an extinct species of giant flightless birds, the moa.  One of the types of moa - Notornis mantellis - is even named after him.  Walter was also active in learned societies in New Zealand, such as the Philosophical Institute and the Royal Society of NZ. From time to time, he was also acting director of the Geological Survey and Colonial Museum.  You can read more about Walter Mantell here.

When Walter's father Gideon died of narcotic poisoning, after taking an overdose of pain medication, some of his most treasured fossils made their way to New Zealand.  One of these is depicted in the photo attached to this post: the fossilised tooth of an Iguanodon discovered by his mother in Cuckfield, West Sussex.  It is now part of the collections held at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand.  After investigating this weekend, however, it is sadly not on public display.  

The tooth was found in 1820 and Gideon Mantell realised that it did not belong to any living animal or reptile, although he found some similarities with the much smaller iguana found in the Caribbean. The name that Gideon Mantell gave to the animal from which the tooth had come was Iguanodon meaning 'Iguana-tooth'. Unlike other reptiles, however, this tooth has a flattened surface used for grinding, indicating that Iguanodon was a herbivore.   Gideon Mantell then became obsessed with finding as much evidence of the creatures that roamed the prehistoric world as possible.  His finds, along with those of other scientists, laid part of the foundation for Darwin's work on evolution, which shook the religious and historical certainties of the intellectual world of the 19th century to their foundations, the effects of which are still being worked through in the present.  It is somewhat ironic, I think, that the quarrying and mining demanded by the rapid transformation of Britain into a 'modern' industrialised country, and which fostered and expanded Britain's empire including New Zealand, also turned up the evidence that would so radically transform the way people thought about the world.