![]() “The bony tendons running along the sides of the spine would also have prevented the dinosaur from bending the base of its tail, as seen in the skeleton in the Sedgwick Museum, and adopting such a steeply upright posture." These bony tendons would have stiffened the back while it was held more or less horizontally and the tail, which stuck out at the rear, would have acted as a heavy cantilever (or counterbalance) to the front part of the body,” says Norman. ![]() “The animal's back and tail were stiffened by bundles of bony rods – ossified tendons – that you can see if you look along the spine of the animal. The ‘thumb’ was a ferocious dagger-like spike, while its ‘little finger’ was elongate and prehensile, and could have been used to help grasp clumps of vegetation. Research by Norman has shown that three of the fingers of Iguanodon’s ‘hands’ were modified to form a load-bearing foot with toes that ended in broad, flattened hooves. Palaeobiologist Dr David Norman, who was director of the Sedgwick Museum from 1991 to 2011, has shown in the course of his work on dinosaurs that this upright posture would not have been possible for an animal like this it would have spent much of its time browsing and walking on all four legs. Iggy is posed in the ‘kangaroo-style’ posture that was an early interpretation of the creature's stance. Fossilised bones of Iguanodon or its close relatives, which lived between 140 and 120 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period, have also been found in several places in Britain, notably the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Dorset, Yorkshire and Potton in Bedfordshire. Barney Brown, the University’s head of digital communications, set the dinosaur lyrics to a bluegrass tune which he sings in a gravelly voice. It’s not known when the song was last heard by the public or what the original musical score was. The lyrics appear in WJT Mitchell's The Last Dinosaur Book (1998) and the song is discussed in Science in Wonderland (2015) by Melanie Keene (Homerton College, Cambridge).Ī plaster replica of a skeleton found in a mine in 1878, Iggy was given to the Sedgwick Museum by the King of Belgium. The original creature would have measured 11 metres from nose to tail and weighed more than an elephant. Some 160 years on, Cambridge University has revived this song in celebration of the Iguanodon (nicknamed Iggy) on display at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. The model that provided an unlikely dinner venue that December evening was part of a set of concrete dinosaurs – the world’s first full-size dino-sculptures – made for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. On New Year’s Eve 1853, a group of entrepreneurs dined inside the mould for a giant model Iguanodon and, it is reported, sang a rousing song in praise of dinosaurs. The chorus runs: The jolly old beast/Is not deceased/There’s life in him again! ROAR. ![]() Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.
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