Gideon Mantell 1790 - 1852

occupation:
Geologist,
Surgeon
Nationality:
English; British
born in:
Lewes, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom

1805 - apprenticed in Lewes to James Moore, a surgeon, with whom (following six months at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London) he entered into partnership. 1822 - The Fossils of the South Downs published. 1825 - announced the discovery of Iguanodon, one of the various kinds of dinosaurs (not yet so called). 1835 - became the second recipient of the Geological Society's Wollaston medal. 1833 - Geology of the South-East of England published in which he announced his discovery of a second kind of dinosaur, Hylaeosaurus. Heavily armoured, Hylaeosaurus confirmed that dinosaurs walked on solid ground and were not amphibian, as had earlier been thought. 1834 - received an honorary LLD from Yale. 1838 - needing money, sold his fossil collection to the British Museum for £4,000.