Life size
restorations of these and other extinct animals were erected in the
grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, and in Central
Park, New York. Those in London still exist, so far as the writer is
aware, but the stern mandate of a former mayor of New York ordered the
destruction of the Central Park models, not indeed as incorrect
scientifically, but as inconsistent with the doctrines of revealed
religion, and they were accordingly broken up and thrown into the
waters of the Park lake. Small replicas of these early attempts at
restoring dinosaurs may still be seen in some of the older museums in
this country and abroad.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--SKELETON OF CAMPTOSAURUS, AN AMERICAN
RELATIVE OF THE IGUANODON.]
The real construction of the Iguanodon was gradually built up by later
discoveries, and in 1877 an extraordinary find in a coal mine at
Bernissart in Belgium brought to light no less than seventeen
skeletons more or less complete. These were found in an ancient
fissure filled with rocks of Comanchic age, traversing the
Carboniferous strata in which the coal seam lay, and with them were
skeletons of other extinct reptiles of smaller size. The open fissure
had evidently served as a trap into which these ancient giants had
fallen, and either killed by the fall or unable to escape from the
pit, their remains had been subsequently covered up by sediments and
the pit filled in to remain sealed up until the present day.
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