Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems

By Pascal Godefroit

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2012 Indiana University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-35721-2

Contents

List of Contributors,
Preface by David B. Norman,
Acknowledgments,
Part 1 New Investigations into the Iguanodon Sinkhole at Bernissa and Other Early Cretaceous Localities in the Mons Basin (Belgium),
Part 2 The Bernissart Iguanodons and Their Kin,
Part 3 Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems In and Outside Europe,
Part 4 Cretaceous Vertebrate Faunas after the Bernissart Iguanodons,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Bernissart and the Iguanodons: Historical Perspective and New Investigations

Pascal Godefroit, Johan Yans, and Pierre Bultynck

The discovery of complete and articulated skeletons of Iguanodon at Bernissart in 1878 came at a time when the anatomy of dinosaurs was still poorly understood, and thus considerable advances were made possible. Here we briefly describe, mainly from documents in the archives of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the circumstances of the discovery of the Bernissart iguanodons. We also provide information about their preparation and mounting in laboratories, for exhibitions, and in early studies. We also summarize the latest results of a multidisciplinary project dedicated to the material collected in the cores drilled in 2002–2003 in and around the Iguanodon Sinkhole at Bernissart.

The Bernissart Iguanodons: A Cornerstone in the History of Paleontology

The discovery of the first Iguanodon fossils has become a legend in the small world of paleontology. Around 1822, Mary Ann Mantell accompanied her husband, the physician Dr. Gideon Algernon Mantell, on his medical rounds and by chance discovered large fossilized teeth. Her husband found the teeth intriguing. With advice from Georges Cuvier, William Clift, and William Daniel Conybeare, he described them and named them Iguanodon, "iguana tooth," because of their superficial resemblance to those of living iguanas (Mantell, 1825). Iguanodon was one the three founding members of the Dinosauria—along with Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus --named by Richard Owen in 1842.

For 56 years, little was known about Iguanodon and other dinosaurs. Mantell imagined these antediluvian animals to be some kind of giant lizards with elongated bodies and sprawling limbs (Benton, 1989). In 1854, the sculptor Waterhouse Hawkins, following Owen's advice, realized full-size reconstructions of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus for the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. Iguanodon was reconstructed as a rhinoceros-like heavy quadruped with a large spike on its nose. These impressive monsters invoked the first public sensation over dinosaurs (Norman, 1985).

The first partial dinosaur skeleton, named Hadrosaurus foulkii Leidy, 1858, was discovered in 1857 in New Jersey. This skeleton was reconstructed in a bipedal gait at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, but many questions were still left unanswered about the general appearance of dinosaurs.

Then, 20 years later, another Iguanodon discovery broke the scientific world—and the dinosaur world—wide open (Forster, 1997). The discovery of complete and articulated skeletons of Iguanodon at Bernissart in 1878 revealed for the first time the anatomy of dinosaurs, and thus considerable advances were made possible, in combination with the remarkable discoveries in the American Midwest described by Marsh and Cope (Norman, 1987).

Many manuscripts and plans relating to the original excavations at Bernissart are preserved in the paleontological archives of the RBINS, which allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of the discovery of these fantastic dinosaurs.

Institutional abbreviations. NHMUK, The Natural History Museum, London (formerly the British Museum [Natural History]), U.K.; RBINS, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels (formerly MRHNB, Musée royal d'Histoire naturelle de Belgique), Belgium.

The Discovery and Excavation of the Bernissart Iguanodons

Bernissart is a former coal-mining village in southwestern Belgium, situated 21 km south of Mons and less than 1 km from the Franco-Belgian frontier. Pre-industrial coal extraction began at Bernissart around 1717 (Delguste, 2003). In 1757, Duke Emmanuel de Croÿ grouped together the different coal companies in northern France into the powerful Anzin Company, which started the industrial exploitation of the coal in the Bernissart area during the second half of the eighteenth century (Delguste, 2006). In the nineteenth century, the Bernissart Coal Board Limited Company dug five coal pits on Bernissart territory. The Négresse pit (no. 1, exploited from 1841) and Sainte-Barbe pit (no. 3, exploited from 1849; Fig. 1.1) were used for coal extraction and coupled with the Moulin pit (no. 2, exploited from 1842) for ventilation. The Sainte-Catherine pit (no. 4, exploited from 1864) was the third extraction pit and was coupled with pit no. 5 (exploited from ?1874) for ventilation. The maximum distance between pits 1 and 5 was about 1,600 m. With a depth of 422 m, the Sainte-Barbe pit was the deepest. In spite of a rather archaic technology, the daily production for the three extraction pits was about 800 tons. However, the flood problems were more important than in other coal mines from the Mons area; steam pumps were used to extract the water.

On February 28, 1878, miners digging a horizontal exploration gallery 322 m below ground level suddenly encountered, 35 m to the south of the Luronne seam, disturbed rocks, indicating that they were penetrating inside a vertical cran—a local term meaning a pit formed by natural collapse through the coal seams that was filled especially with clayey deposits normally located above the coal measures.

On March 1, chief overseer Cyprien Ballez, engineer Léon Latinis, and mine director Gustave Fagès went down into the Sainte-Barbe pit to evaluate the situation. It was decided to traverse this cran and to rejoin the coal seam on the other side. Overseer Motuelle and miners Jules Créteur and Alphonse Blanchard were put in charge of continuing the exploration gallery through the perturbed layers of the cran. On March 9, Ballez noticed that the exploration gallery was still in the perturbed zone of the cran.

In March, the miners had already collected dinosaur remains: fragmentary bones and teeth, which are labeled "remains of the first Iguanodon, March 1878" and are housed in the paleontological collections of the RBINS. But they apparently paid little attention to these discoveries, believing that they were just fossil wood.

On April 1, the exploration team again entered nondisturbed but inclined formations. On April 3, Ballez and Latinis went down again together in the exploration gallery. The engineer estimated that they had again reached coal-bearing formations. Latinis's explanations apparently did not satisfy Fagès. Indeed, the mine manager decided to accompany the engineer and the chief overseer in the exploration gallery on April 5. While inspecting the deposits, Fagès found a long object with an oval cross section and a fibrous texture. Latinis believed that it was a fossil oak branch. Conversely, Fagès ironically asserted that it was a rib of Father Adam. Miner Jules Créteur mentioned that he had already found a larger fossil, and the team...