Dinosaur Fun with Iguanodon

Iguanodon does not have the popularity of such dinosaurs as Tyrannosaurus Rex, but since it was the second dinosaur that humans ever named, the first dinosaur for which a fossil was found, and the first dinosaur for which a complete skeleton was found, it deserves some attention. In 2000, it had its first starring role in a movie, when an iguanodon named Aladar was the hero of the film Dinosaur (more).

But its real importance is that it was one of the first dinosaurs ever discovered and named. At first, scientists could not figure out that its spikes were actually its thumbs (the only such thumbs in the animal kingdom), and so the earliest drawings and models of Iguanodon show the dinosaur with a spike on its head. Remains are often found in large groups, suggesting that these animals traveled in herds. Iguanodon fossils are plentiful and widespread on every continent except Antarctica.

One of the most amazing dinosaur discoveries of all time was the discovery of a herd of over thirty complete Iguanon skeletons in a coalmine in Belgium in 1878. For the first time, scientists could tell that the dinosaur was a biped (walked on two legs) and could get a realistic idea of what a dinosaur looked like. After being moved from the mine and investigated exhaustively, most of these Iguanodons were reunited at the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Belgium, in a single, very impressive display.

By the time of the 1878 discovery, however, humans had been studying Iguanodons for over half a century, because in 1822, Mary Ann Mantell showed to her husband, Dr. Gideon Mantell, a tooth that she had discovered. Thinking the tooth might be from an ancient iguana, since it resembled the teeth of living iguanas, he named it Iguanodon (iguana-tooth). Mary Ann Mantell's Iguanodon tooth, considered the first recognized dinosaur fossil, is preserved at the Museum of New Zealand. (You can learn about how dinosaurs get their names here.)

At the Crystal Palace exhibition in London in 1854, Iguanodon was one of several dinosaurs represented by grotesque statues which mark the invasion of popular culture by dinosaurs, an invasion which continues to our times in films, toys, and parks. Iguanodon was portrayed as a fat quadruped (walking on four legs) with the thumb spike on its nose like the horn of a rhinoceros (a name derived from two Greek words: rhino, nose and ceros, horn). Some twenty years later, the Belgian discovery would prove that representation wrong.

Since remains of Iguanodons of many different sizes have been found from many places and from a wide range of times when dinosaurs lived, they must have been successful. But, as herbivores (plant-eaters), they have a hard time competing for popularity with carnivores (meat-eaters) such as T. rex. But, like all dinosaurs, they have an interesting story that makes them worth our attention.

The illustration is a photograph taken at Dinosaur World in Kentucky.