Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs (review)

Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs, by Dennis R. Dean; pp. xix + 290. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, £55.96, $69.95.

In the history of geology, Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790-1852) stands out as someone special, even exceptional, a figure not unlike Mary Anning or Hugh Miller who within their lives became Victorian folk legends. Mantell's rise to glory was greatly helped by the publication in 1940 of his diaries, edited and abridged by E. Cecil Curwen. Portrayed through his own words, the discoverer of the second known dinosaur, Iguanodon, comes across not as an aloof scientist, Victorian curiosity, or collecting obsessive, but as a very natural and likeable individual. He was the best known of his breed: a provincial middle- class collector who also took to publication. In his day there was someone like him in every neighbourhood: Nathaniel Wetherell, James Bowerbank, John Brown, Samuel Woodward, Etheldred Benett, George Cumberland, and many others. They, too, rose from relative obscurity on the back of geology. In Yorkshire, for example, John Phillips-- Mantell's friend and ten years his junior--ascended a path from vagrant surveyor to Oxford professor. William Williamson, a teenager when Phillips's rise began, soon afterwards left the small-town charm and social politics of Scarborough for the academic world of Manchester, a dark city that was even more politically charged. He, too, would befriend the genial Mantell. In many respects Mantell was typical of the culture of geology in the first half of the nineteenth century. So why does he stand out? Is it an aberration of historiography because dinosaurs became an important element in twentieth-century popular culture, or was he really a man of extraordinary scientific achievement? Dennis Dean, though not entirely pushing Mantell upon us as a man of genius, is certainly in no doubt that Mantell embodied rare scientific qualities.

Having long admired Dean's meticulous studies of the place of geology in nineteenth-century literary culture, I was a little surprised to see how closely he has adhered to the traditional way of writing a scientific life. His tightly focused, carefully considered, and well-paced prose leaves Mantell much better understood but also rather restrained in character. Mantell's diaries reveal passions, and a temperament that soars and plummets. But for Dean the key element of Mantell's life is that surrounding his involvement in the discovery of dinosaurs (a concept which did not exist until Mantell was ten years from his grave). What Dean gives us is one of the best profiles of a fossil collector in this key period in the history of geology. Mantell becomes much more than the discoverer of Iguanodon; he was also deeply involved in the uncovering of six other dinosaurs. Very much a man in the right place, at the right time, with his appropriate inclinations and fortunate contacts, he was also very much the right man. Southeastern England would have revealed its dinosaur bones to someone early in Mantell's century, but it was very fortunate that they fell into the hands of a man of such enquiring mind. The most important section of this book covers the early period in Mantell's life, in which he was inspired by surgeon James Parkinson's pioneering work, for the 1810s were critical years for the new science. So on one level, that of fact and tight narrative, this book succeeds very well; it makes for a good read and tells us a good deal about one of those collectors who were key to the science's rapid rise. Dean adheres very closely to the evidence and rarely enters into speculation. While this gives the story a sense of security, one sometimes wants him to step back and ask "what does this tell us about the man and his times?" The title, the abbreviated footnotes, lack of a full bibliography, and Dean's explanatory introduction, indicate a book attempting to reach...