THE IGUANODON 



form of the creature had to be guessed at by 

 fitting this and that together. But some 

 twenty-five years ago a wonderful find was 

 made near Brussels in a coal-mine at a village 

 called Bernissart. The skeletons of no less than 

 twenty-two huge Iguanodons were found com- 

 plete, and embedded in a fairly soft clay-like 

 rock ! The authorities of the Government 

 Museum took charge of the place and most care- 

 fully removed the rock containing the skeletons 

 to the Museum workshops at Brussels, where 

 the complete skeletons of seven were, with 

 enormous difficulty and care, removed bit by 

 bit from the rock and set up as entire skeletons 

 in the Brussels Museum, where they may be seen. 

 A cast of one of these seven is in our own Natural 

 History Museum. The photograph of the skull 

 of one of these specimens is given in Fig. 145. It 

 shows not only the teeth in position, but in 

 front the bony supports of a great horny beak, 

 like that of a turtle. As you may see in the 

 drawing of the skeleton (Fig. 142), the forefeet 

 (or hands) were provided with five fingers, of 

 which the thumb had a huge claw on it at least 

 a foot long. The foot was very much like that 

 of a bird and had only three toes, and the bones 



201 



