CRETACEOUS DINOSAURS. 259 



CHAPTER VI. 



Order. DINOSAURIJ. 



Genus — Iguanodon. ' Dinosauria," Plates 1 — 5. 



Mr. W. H. Bensted, of Maidstone, the proprietor of a stone-quarry of the 

 ShankHn-sand formation, in the close vicinity of that town, had his attention one day, 

 in May 1834, called by his workmen to what they supposed to be petrified wood in 

 some pieces of stone which they had been blasting. He perceived that what they 

 supposed to be wood was fossil bone, and with a zeal and care which have always 

 characterised this estimable man in his endeavours to secure for science any evidence 

 of fossil remains in his quarry, he immediately resorted to the spot. He found that the 

 bore or blast by which these remains were brought to light, had been inserted into the 

 centre of the specimen, (which is figured in 'Dinosauria,' Plates 1 and 2,) so that the 

 mass of stone containing it had been shattered into many pieces, some of which were 

 blown into the adjoining fields. All these pieces he had carefully collected, and 

 proceeding with equal ardour and success to the removal of the matrix from the 

 fossils, he succeeded after a month's labour in exposing them to ^^ew, and in fitting 

 the fragments to their proper places.* 



The quarry in which these remains were brought to light consists of many strata, 

 regularly alternating, of compact lime-stone, and of sand more or less loose. Each 

 stratum is of the thickness of from eight inches to twelve or fourteen inches, and the alter- 

 nation of the two beds is remarkably regular and equal. The bed in which the fossil 

 turtle Protemi/s serrata, described at pp. 169 — 1 73 of the present Work, was discovered, 

 lies about fiifteen feet below the Iguanodon bed, and is remarkable for the accumu- 

 lations of the spiculse of sponges, with which it abounds. Not far below this is the 

 " Atherfield clay," which joins the " Wealden," the junction of the two being scarcely 

 discoverable, owing to the similarity in texture and colour of the two clays. 



* In a contemporary notice of this discovery, written with evident knowledge of the facts, and within 

 a month after they occurred, it is stated : — " By the great care bestowed upon them, however, by the very 

 intelligent proprietor of the quarry, Mr. W. H. Bensted, nearly all the detached pieces have been collected, 

 and the various bones carefuUy cleared from the rock which forms their matrix." (Philosophical Magazine, 

 July, 1834.) 



Dr. Mantell, referring, in 1848, to this specimen in his 'Wonders of Geology,' vol. i, p. 427, states : — 

 - " The rock was shattered to fragments by the explosion, and the bones were broken into a thousand 

 pieces : but after much labour, I succeeded in uniting the several blocks of stone, and ultimately cleared 

 and repaired the bones, and restored the specimen to its present state." As the specimen was presented 

 to Dr. Mantell, from whom it was purchased, with the rest of his Collection, by the British Museum, we 

 are probably indebted to his skill as well to that of its discoverer for the actual condition in which it may 

 now be studied. 



