The Dinosaur Doctor

Like anyone else with a childhood, there was a period of time where I loved everything and anything that had to do with dinosaurs. I read everything I could about them, checked out movie after movie from the library, and had tons of toy dinosaurs. I can safely say that dinosaurs were my gateway into science. It was my first foray into self-motivated, investigative learning. I learned a lot about the scientific process and biology, in particular. I learned all my Greek and Latin roots from all the dinosaur names, something that has proven immensely useful in medical school.

When I was about seven or eight my parents got me The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs. The title says it all. It actually was a collection of the magazine Dinosaurs!, a publication that was actually the basis of one of my oldest friendships.

One of my favorites sections in the series were the comics of the history of paleontology. Naturally, the first comic was of the first true dinosaur ever discovered, Iguanadon. The discoverer is an interesting man, himself, as paleontology and geology were actually his hobbies. His official profession was medicine. Dr. Gideon Mantell was a somewhat successful physician who had always been interested in science. He had taught himself anatomy and wrote a couple books before formally getting his medical education and membership into the Royal College of Surgeons. In his spare time, he pursued his interests in geology. Inspired by the fossil findings of Mary Anning (one of the most underrated women in scientific history - she discovered the first ichythosaur, plesiosaur, and pterosaur), Mantell searched his local quarries and was able to recover the fossil teeth of a previously unidentified creature.

Mantell eventually named the creature Iguandon, which means "Iguana tooth", subsequently heralding the study of dinosaurs that has captured the imagination of people everywhere. Mantell went on to become an authority on prehistoric reptiles but not without drama in the form of Sir Richard Owen, a rockstar douchebag of paleontology with a knighthood that tried to take credit for the discovery of Iguanadon. After Mantell died, Owen had a section of his spine removed and preserved for storage at the Royal College of Surgeons. In a way, Mantell had the ultimate last laugh on Owen as fossil evidence has supported Mantell's conception of what Iguandon and other dinosaurs looked like, disproving Owen's belief that they appeared as large, mammal-like lizards.

Personally, Mantell will always be an inspiration to me. When I learned as a kid that he had turned his home into his own personal museum, I sought to do the same with my own room. Even today, I will always remember him as a true man of science, who was not limited by his lack of formal training in other fields. Dinosaurs still fascinate me and, one day, I want to go on a real fossil hunt. I can only hope to get as lucky as Mantell did.