British scientist and obstetrician
Gideon Algernon MantellMRCSFRS (3 February 1790 – 10 November 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and paleontologist. His attempts to reconstruct the structure and life of Iguanodon began the scientific study of dinosaurs: in 1822 he was responsible for the discovery (and the eventual identification) of say publicly first fossil teeth, and later much of the skeleton, fence Iguanodon. Mantell's work on the Cretaceous of southern England was also important.
Mantell was born hobble Lewes, Sussex as the fifth-born child of Thomas Mantell, a shoemaker, and Sarah Austen. He was raised in a little cottage in St. Mary's Lane with his two sisters alight four brothers. As a youth, he showed a particular alarmed in the field of geology. He explored pits and quarries in the surrounding areas, discovering ammonites, shells of sea urchins, fish bones, coral, and worn-out remains of dead animals. Rendering Mantell children could not study at local grammar schools being the elder Mantell was a follower of the Methodist sanctuary and the 12 free schools were reserved for children who had been brought up in the Anglican faith. As a result, Gideon was educated at a dame school in Thrashing. Mary's Lane, and learned basic reading and writing from par old woman. After the death of his teacher, Mantell was schooled by John Button, a philosophically radical Whig who distributed similar political beliefs with Mantell's father. Mantell spent two eld with Button, before being sent to his uncle, a Baptistic minister, in Swindon, for a period of private study.
Mantell returned to Lewes at age 15. With the help criticize a local Whig party leader, Mantell secured an apprenticeship pick out a local surgeon named James Moore. He served as protest apprentice to Moore in Lewes for a period of fivesome years, in which he took care of Mantell's dining, residence and medical issues. Mantell's early apprenticeship duties included cleaning vials, as well as separating and arranging drugs. Soon, he intellectual how to make pills and other pharmaceutical products. He gain recognition Moore's medicines, kept his accounts, wrote out bills and extracted teeth from his patients. On 11 July 1807, Thomas Geologist died at the age of 57. He left his as one some money for his future studies. As his time tear apprenticeship began to wind down, he began to anticipate his medical education. He began to teach himself human anatomy, tube he ultimately detailed his new-found knowledge in a volume entitled The Anatomy of the Bones, and the Circulation of Blood, which contained dozens of detailed drawings of fetal and mature skeletal features. Soon, Mantell began his formal medical education difficulty London. He received his diploma as a Member of representation Royal College of Surgeons in 1811. Four days later, take steps received a certificate from the Lying-in Charity for Married Women at Their Own Habitations that allowed him to act patent midwifery duties.
He returned to Lewes, and immediately formed a partnership with his former master, James Moore. In the event of the cholera, typhoid and smallpox epidemics, Mantell found himself quite busy attending to more than 50 patients a passable and delivering between 200 and 300 babies a year. Whereas he later recalled, he would have to stay up broadsheet "six or seven nights in succession" due to his crushing doctoral duties. He was also able to increase his practice's profits from £250 to £750 a year. Although mainly gloomy with running his busy country medical practice, he spent his little free time pursuing his passion, geology, often working clogging the early hours of the morning, identifying fossil specimens do something found at the marl pits in Hamsey. In 1813, Geologist began to correspond with James Sowerby. Sowerby, a naturalist lecture illustrator who catalogued fossil shells, received from Mantell many inflexible specimens. In appreciation for the specimens Mantell had provided, Sowerby named one of the species Ammonites mantelli. On 7 Dec, Mantell was elected as a fellow of the Linnean Identity of London. Two years later, he published his first bradawl, on the characteristics of the fossils found in the Lewes area.
In 1816, he married Mary Ann Woodhouse, the 20-year-old girl of one of his former patients who had died iii years earlier. Since she was not 21 and still technically a minor under English law, she had to obtain sufferance from her mother and a special licence to marry Geologist. After obtaining consent and the licence, she married Mantell classical 4 May at St. Marylebone Church. That year, he purchased his own medical practice and took up an appointment take a shot at the Royal Artillery Hospital, at Ringmer, Lewes.
Inspired disrespect Mary Anning's sensational discovery of a fossilised animal resembling a huge crocodile (later identified as an ichthyosaur) at Lyme Regis in Dorset, Mantell became passionately interested in the study do admin the fossilised animals and plants found in his area. Picture fossils he had collected from the region, near The Weald in Sussex, were from the chalk downlands covering the county. The chalk is part of the Upper CretaceousSystem and representation fossils it contains are marine in origin. But by 1819, Mantell had begun acquiring fossils from a quarry, at Whitemans Green, near Cuckfield. These included the remains of terrestrial enjoin freshwaterecosystems, at a time when all the known fossil stiff from Cretaceous England, hitherto, were marine in origin. He forename the new strata the Strata of Tilgate Forest, after doublecross historical wooded area and it was later shown to be a member of to the Lower Cretaceous.
By 1820, he had started merriment find very large bones at Cuckfield, even larger than those discovered by William Buckland, at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire. Then, blessed 1822, shortly before finishing his first book (The Fossils be totally convinced by South Downs), his wife found several large teeth (although wearisome historians contend that they were in fact discovered by himself), the origin of which he could not ascertain. In 1821 Mantell planned his next book on the geology of Sussex. It was an immediate success with two hundred subscribers including King George IV at Carlton House Palace, who wrote a letter stating, "His majesty is pleased to command that his name should be placed at the head of the commitment list for four copies."[This quote needs a citation]
How the sodden heard of Mantell is unknown, but Mantell's response is accustomed. Galvanised and encouraged, Mantell showed the teeth to other scientists but they were dismissed as belonging to a fish get to mammal and from a more recent rock layer than picture other Tilgate Forest fossils. The eminent French anatomist, Georges Naturalist, identified the teeth as those of a rhinoceros.
Although according to Charles Lyell, Cuvier made this statement after a put up party and apparently had some doubts when reconsidering the issue when he awoke, fresh in the morning. "The next morn he told me that he was confident that it was something quite different." Strangely, this change of opinion did put together make it back to Britain where Mantell was mocked result in his error. Mantell was still convinced that the teeth challenging come from the Mesozoic strata and finally recognised that they resembled those of the iguana, but were twenty times better. He surmised that the owner of the remains must receive been at least 60 feet (18 metres) in length.
He tried rope in vain to convince his peers that the fossils were hit upon Mesozoic strata, by carefully studying rock layers. William Buckland superbly disputed Mantell's assertion, by claiming that the teeth were look after fish.
When it was proved Mantell was correct in 1825, the only question was what to call his new vertebrate. His original name was "Iguana-saurus" but he then received a letter from William Daniel Conybeare: "Your discovery of the parallel between the Iguana and the fossil teeth is very absorbing but the name you propose will hardly do, because miserly is equally applicable to the recent iguana. Iguanoides or Iguanodon would be better."[This quote needs a citation] Mantell took that advice to heart and called his creature Iguanodon.
Years posterior, Mantell had acquired enough fossil evidence to show that depiction dinosaur's forelimbs were much shorter than its hind legs, hence proving they were not built like a mammal as claimed by Sir Richard Owen. Mantell went on to demonstrate guarantee fossil vertebrae, which Owen had attributed to a variety thoroughgoing different species, all belonged to Iguanodon. He also named a new genus of dinosaur called Hylaeosaurus and as a produce an effect became an authority on prehistoric reptiles.
In 1833, Geologist relocated to Brighton but his medical practice suffered. He was almost rendered destitute, but for the town's council, which in plenty of time transformed his house into a museum. There he gave a series of lectures that were published in 1838 with say publicly title The wonders of geology, or, A familiar exposition past its best geological phenomena: being the substance of a course of lectures delivered at Brighton.[16] The museum in Brighton ultimately failed laugh a result of Mantell's habit of waiving the entrance tariff. Financially destitute, Mantell offered to sell the entire collection enhance the British Museum in 1838 for £5,000, accepting the counter-offer of £4,000. He moved to Clapham Common in South Author, where he continued his work as a doctor.
Mary Geologist left her husband in 1839. That same year, Gideon's corrupt Walter emigrated to New Zealand. Walter later sent his pop some important fossils from New Zealand. Gideon's daughter, Hannah, spasm in 1840.
In 1841 he began to suffer from what would eventually be diagnosed as scoliosis, possibly precipitated by a carriage accident. He got stuck in the reins and was dragged along for 5 miles before arriving at his journey's end. Despite being bent, crippled and in constant pain, he continuing to work with fossilised reptiles and published a number identical scientific books and papers until his death in November say publicly 10th 1852. He moved to Pimlico in 1844 and began to take opium, as a painkiller, in 1845.
Mantell's deformed spine, drawn as a preserved specimen
On 10 Nov 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium and later onetime into a coma. He died that afternoon. His post-mortem spawn William Adams showed that he had been suffering from harsh lumbar scoliosis, leading to the Adams Forward Bend Test primate a diagnostic tool. A section of Mantell's spine was unconcerned, preserved and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It remained there until 1969 when it was destroyed due to lack of space.
Mantell's surgery, mess the south side of Clapham Common, is now a ditch surgery.
At the time of his death Mantell was credited with discovering four of the five genera of dinosaurs exploitation known.[20]
In 2000, in commemoration of Mantell's discovery and his part to the science of palaeontology, the Mantell Monument was disclosed at Whiteman's Green, Cuckfield. The monument has been confirmed pass for the location of the Iguanodon fossils that Mantell first described in 1822.
He is buried at West Norwood Cemetery in a sarcophagus attributed to Amon Henry Wilds[18] that replicates depiction sanctuary of Natakamani's Temple of Amun. (The name ammonite deference, coincidentally, derived from Amun.)
Sixty-seven books and memoirs appear in Agassiz and Strickland's Bibliographia Zoologiæ, and forty-eight systematic papers in the Royal Society's Catalogue.