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3 Bernissart and the Iguanodons: Historical Perspective and New Investigations Pascal Godefroit*, Johan Yans, and Pierre Bultynck The discovery of complete and articulated skeletons of Iguanodon at Bernissart in 1878 came at a time when the anatomy of dinosaurs was still poorly understood, and thus considerable advances were made possible. Here we briefly describe, mainly from documents in the archives of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the circumstances of the discovery of the Bernissart iguanodons. We also provide information about their preparation and mounting in laboratories, for exhibitions, and in early studies. We also summarize the latest results of a multidisciplinary project dedicated to the material collected in the cores drilled in 2002–2003 in and around the Iguanodon Sinkhole at Bernissart. The discovery of the first Iguanodon fossils has become a legend in the small world of paleontology. Around 1822, Mary Ann Mantell accompanied her husband, the physician Dr. Gideon Algernon Mantell, on his medical rounds and by chance discovered large fossilized teeth. Her husband found the teeth intriguing. With advice from Georges Cuvier, William Clift, and William Daniel Conybeare, he described them and named them Iguanodon , “iguana tooth,” because of their superficial resemblance to those of living iguanas (Mantell, 1825). Iguanodon was one the three founding members of the Dinosauria—along with Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus— named by Richard Owen in 1842. For 56 years, little was known about Iguanodon and other dinosaurs. Mantell imagined these antediluvian animals to be some kind of giant lizards with elongated bodies and sprawling limbs (Benton, 1989). In 1854, the sculptor Waterhouse Hawkins, following Owen’s advice, realized fullsize reconstructions of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus for the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. Iguanodon was reconstructed as a rhinoceros-like heavy quadruped with a large spike on its nose. These impressive monsters invoked the first public sensation over dinosaurs (Norman, 1985). The first partial dinosaur skeleton, named Hadrosaurus foulkii Leidy, 1858, was discovered in 1857 in New Jersey. This skeleton was reconstructed in a bipedal gait at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, but many questions were still left unanswered about the general appearance of dinosaurs. Then, 20 years later, another Iguanodon discovery broke the scientific world—and the dinosaur world—wide open (Forster, 1997). The discovery of complete and articulated skeletons of Iguanodon at Bernissart in 1878 revealed for the first time the anatomy of dinosaurs, and thus considerable advances were made possible, in combination with the remarkable The Bernissart Iguanodons: A Cornerstone in the History of Paleontology 1 Godefroit et al. 4 discoveries in the American Midwest described by Marsh and Cope (Norman, 1987). Many manuscripts and plans relating to the original excavations at Bernissart are preserved in the paleontological archives of the RBINS, which allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of the discovery of these fantastic dinosaurs. Institutional abbreviations. NHMUK, The Natural History Museum, London (formerly the British Museum [Natural History]), U.K.; RBINS, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels (formerly MRHNB, Musée royal d’Histoire naturelle de Belgique), Belgium. Bernissart is a former coal-mining village in southwestern Belgium, situated 21 km south of Mons and less than 1 km from the Franco-Belgian frontier. Preindustrial coal extraction began at Bernissart around 1717 (Delguste, 2003). In 1757, Duke Emmanuel de Croÿ grouped together the different coal companies in northern France into the powerful Anzin Company, which started the industrial exploitation of the coal in the Bernissart area during the second half of the eighteenth century (Delguste, 2006). In the nineteenth century, the Bernissart Coal Board Limited Company dug five coal pits on Bernissart territory. The Négresse pit (no. 1, exploited from 1841) and Sainte-Barbe pit (no. 3, exploited from 1849; Fig. 1.1) were used for coal extraction and coupled with the Moulin pit (no. 2, exploited from 1842) for ventilation. The SainteCatherine pit (no. 4, exploited from 1864) was the third extraction pit and was coupled with pit no. 5 (exploited from ?1874) for ventilation. The maximum distance between pits 1 and 5 was about 1,600 m. With a depth of 422 m, the Sainte-Barbe pit was the deepest. In spite of a rather archaic technology, the daily production for the three extraction pits was about 800 tons. However, the flood problems were more important than in other coal mines from the Mons area; steam pumps were used to extract the water. On February 28, 1878, miners digging a horizontal exploration gallery 322 m below ground level suddenly encountered, 35 m...

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