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By Phillipa Mallin
In around 1820, a particularly interesting fossil was discovered at one of the quarries on Whitemans Green, Cuckfield, and was shown to Lewes doctor and palaeontologist Gideon Mantell. From boyhood, Mantell had been fascinated by the shells and fossils he found in the chalk quarries near his home in Lewes. He had studied medicine and anatomy in London before returning to Lewes to be a doctor but in his spare time he studied the geology of Sussex. When he was introduced to the Whiteman Green quarries in 1817, he realised the rock here was much older than anything he had seen before, dating from between 65-130 million years ago, the period we now refer to as the Cretaceous era. He wrote that the ridge on which Whitemans Green stands was once part of a huge river delta ‘a mighty river flowing in a tropical climate over sandstone rocks through a country of palms and tree ferns inhabited by turtles, crocodiles and other reptiles’ Mantell was often accompanied by his wife Mary on his visits to Cuckfield.
She shared her husband’s interest in geology and was a skilled artist, illustrating his book ‘The Fossils of the South Downs’ with engravings taken from his sketches. The site of the quarries is now marked by a plaque near the main Whitemans Green car park, the quarries having been probably filled in around 1847 but in the regency period they were an important source of stone for amongst other things the transformation of Brighton from a small fishing village to a fashionable resort. Stone was also needed to upgrade local roads with increased stagecoach traffic, Cuckfield being an important staging post at the time.
The unusual fossil (pictured) that Mantell was shown in around 1820 appeared to be a tooth - Mantell had instructed Leney, his quarryman, to concentrate on finding teeth and this was found with other teeth and large bones, all from the same creature. Mantell thought it was likely to have been a plant eater because of the heavy pattern of wear on the teeth. A visit to the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London convinced him that the animal was a reptile when he saw the teeth of an iguana that matched his fossil teeth.
He named his find Iguanodon or ‘iguana teeth’ in an academic paper ‘Notice on the Iguanodon, a newly discovered reptile, from the sandstone of Tilgate Forest in Sussex’ which was presented to the Royal Society on 10th February 1825. It was only the second dinosaur to be named. It is this 200th anniversary that is being celebrated in Sussex this year, centred in Lewes but with a talk by Lewes Town Guide Debby Matthews at The Old School in Cuckfield on Thursday 6th March at 2.30pm where she will look at the importance of Cuckfield, its quarries in Mantell’s career and of its place in the study of palaeontology. Debby has long had an interest in Mantell as she is a Lewes Town Guide and lives in the house in which he was born in Station Street. For a list of events and more information about our Cuckfield talk, see the Cuckfield Museum website: www.cuckfieldmuseum.org
Mantell went on to discover other dinosaur species at Whitemans Green including Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus and Pelorosaurus but it was his first named species, the Iguanodon, with its distinctive thumb spikes, used as a herbivore to crack seeds and nuts and also to defend itself, which is always thought of as ‘The Cuckfield Dinosaur’. Many people will be surprised to know that the original Iguanodon tooth given to Gideon Mantell by quarryman Leney is now in the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand. It was taken to New Zealand by his son Walter, a keen natural scientist, who went to live there after his father’s death in in 1852.
Cuckfield Museum will reopen on 15th February with its permanent dinosaur exhibition including original bones from the Whitemans Green quarries and fossil activities for children. Opening hours are WednesdaySaturday 10am-12.30pm.
