In the year 1878 was announced one of the most fortunate discoveries known in the whole history of geological science—a discovery unique of its kind, and one which throws considerable light on the nature of the monster first discovered by Dr. Mantell. In that year came the good news that no less than twenty-three Iguanodons had been found in the colliery of Bernissart, in Belgium, between Mons and Tournai, near the French frontier. The coal-bearing rocks (coal-measures) of this colliery, overlain by chalk and other deposits of later age, are fissured in many places by deep valleys or chasms more than 218 yards deep. Though now filled up, they must at one time have been open gorges on an old land surface. Into one of these chasms were somehow precipitated twenty-three Iguanodons, numbers of fish, a frog-like animal, several species of turtles, crocodiles, and numerous ferns similar to those described by Mantell from the Weald. It it not easy to conjecture how this large and varied assemblage of animals came to be collected together and entombed in this one place, but possibly their carcases were swept by some flood into the chasm in which the remains were discovered. They were buried in clay interstratified with sand, a fact which was interpreted in accordance with the above suggestion.
M. de Pauw, the accomplished controller of the workshops in the Royal Museum of Natural History at Brussels, spent three whole years in extracting this splendid series of fossils from the pit-shaft, the bones being brought up from a depth of rather more than 350 yards. But at the end of this time it was only the rough material that had been got together, and every block containing bones requires a great deal of most careful labour before the bones in it are so exposed that they can be properly studied. Out of the twenty-three specimens, fifteen had, in the year 1883, been chiselled out, eight remaining to be worked at; and although five skilled workmen were then constantly at work, progress was necessarily slow.
In 1883, that is after seven years, two huge entire skeletons had been set up in a great glass case in the Courtyard of the Museum at Brussels, and these exhibit with marvellous completeness the structure of the extinct monster.[17] The work reflects the highest credit on M. de Pauw;[18] and the director of the Bernissart Mining Company, M. Fages, deserves the thanks of all scientific men for so liberally aiding this important undertaking. These specimens illustrate the conclusion, previously arrived at by Professor Huxley, that Dinosaurs, as a group, occupy a position in the great chain of animal life intermediate between reptiles and birds. Indeed, it is the opinion of this great authority, and of many naturalists of the present day, that whenever future discoveries may reveal the ancestry of birds, it will be found that they came from Dinosaurs, or that both originated from a common ancestor.
[17] In August, 1892, Mr. Dollo wrote, in answer to inquiries from South Kensington, to say that five are already mounted and exhibited, and five more are almost ready for mounting. He also stated that the remains represent twenty-nine individuals, not twenty-three, as above.
[18] Geological Magazine, January, 1885.
The specimens so skilfully set up by M. de Pauw represent two distinct species. The larger one, Iguanodon Bernissartensis, cannot be less than fifteen feet high, and, measured from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail, is rather over thirty feet long, covering nearly twenty-four feet of ground in its erect position (see [Fig. 21]). Iguanodon Mantelli is smaller and more slender looking, with a height of over ten feet, and a length of about twenty feet. (See [Fig. 22].)
Fig. 21.—Skeleton of Iguanodon Bernissartensis.