20 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT 



But these were much larger than crocodiles, and quite 

 peculiar in their appearance. The principal one was the 

 Iguanodon. He stood on his hind legs like a kangaroo, 

 with a great thick tail, which may have helped to support 

 him. When full grown he stood about 14 ft. high. You 

 may find on the shore vertebrae, i.e., joints of the back- 

 bone, sometimes large, sometimes quite small if they come 

 from the end of the tail. I have found several here about 

 5 inches long by 4 or 5 across. A few years ago I found 

 the end of a leg bone almost a foot in diameter. Dr. 

 Mantell, a great geological explorer in the days when these 

 reptiles were first discovered about 80 years ago, estimated 

 from the size of part of a bone found in Sandown Bay 

 that one of these reptiles must have had a leg 9 ft. long. 

 It was a long time after the bones of these creatures were 

 first found before it was known what they really looked 

 like. The animals lived a long way from here, and by 

 the time the river had washed them down to its mouth 

 the skeletons were broken up, and the bones scattered. 

 At last a discovery was made, which told us what the 

 animals were like. In a coal mine at Bernissart in 

 Belgium the miners found the coal seam they were follow- 

 ing suddenly come to an end, and they got into a mass 

 of clay. After a while it was seen what had happened. 

 They had struck the buried channel of an old river, which 

 in the Wealden days had flowed through and cut its 

 channel in the coal strata, which are much older still 

 than the Wealden. And in the mud of the ancient buried 

 river what should they come upon but whole skeletons 

 of Iguanodons. In the days of long ago the great beasts 

 had come down to the river to drink, and had got " bogged " 

 in the soft clay. The skeletons were carefully got out, 

 and set up in the Museum at Brussels. Without going 

 so far as that, you may see in the Natural History Museum 

 in London, or the Geological Museum at Oxford, a 

 facsimile of one of these skeletons, large as life, and have 



