Tag Archives: dinosaur

Making connections – the house that Gideon Mantell was born in

8 January 2010 – 3.12pm

One of the great things about blogs are the connections that get made. For Te Papa this means we get new and interesting links to things in our collections.

The house in Lewes where Gideon Mantell was born in Feb 1790, as it looks today - in the snow, 2010. Copyright Debby Matthews.

Debby Mathews lives in Lewes, near Brighton in the south of England – in the same house in which Gideon Mantell was born, on 3 Feb 1790! The house is timber framed and dates back to 1700. Gideon’s father had a shoemaking workshop downstairs and the family lived upstairs.

What’s the connection? Well Debby saw our recent post about the fossil iguanodon tooth. It’s one of the most significant items in Te Papa’s collections and the topic of a recent Tales of Te Papa

Watch Tales of Te Papa – the iguanodon tooth

Gideon Mantell described the fossil in 1825 and it’s considered to be the very first fossil to be recognised as being from a dinosaur. On that basis, our resident geologist Hamish Campbell calls the fossil tooth “one of the holy grails of natural science”!

Find out more about the iguanodon tooth on Collections Online

Debby sent us a picture of the house the other day. It’s covered in snow right now, as the UK experiences one of the coldest winters in many years!

She is involved in celebrating the work of Gideon Mantell in his home town of Lewes, and organising events for 2010 to commemorate 220 years since his birth. We hope she’ll keep up the links with Te Papa and the famous iguanodon tooth that has journeyed all the way out to New Zealand and  into our collection.

By pamelalovis | Posted in Collections Online, History | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

Dinosaurs in time for Christmas!

10 December 2009 – 1.54pm

I was walking along the corridor at the back of Te Papa the other day and spotted these boxes….

Dinosaur boxes in the corridor

Dinosaur boxes in the corridor. Copyright Te Papa

You see some quite strange things out the back of Te Papa (it could be a blog all of its own ”Out  back Te Papa” ) but this was one of the better ones.

Further investigation revealed that the dinosaurs had escaped from their boxes and were now living in the workshop next door. Some staff got to meet them…

Meeting a dinosaur in the workshop.

Meeting a dinosaur in the workshop. Copyright Te Papa

Since then the dinosaurs have been on the move.  If you look carefully you’ll see their heads poking above the barrier in the Awesome Forces exhibition on Level Two.

From tomorrow you’ll be able to get a proper look at these scary looking raptors, which are part of a makeover of this exhibition. The two dinosaur models come from Germany and are of a dromaeosaur species, Deinonychus.

No one has found fossils of Deinonychus in New Zealand … yet. But they have been found in Antarctica, Australia and other parts of Gondwana so it’s likely that they did live here once.

Did I mention the unusual packing that the dinosaur models arrived in? – nicely padded bra inserts to protect those sharp claws…

Dinosaur model and worried staff member with unusual packing material

I feel a caption competition coming on! Copyright Te Papa

Unusual packing material for dinosaurs

Unusual packing material for dinosaurs. Copyright Te Papa

By pamelalovis | Posted in Exhibitions, Fossils | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

New Zealand’s dinosaur expert passes away

7 July 2009 – 7.33pm
Dinosaur toe bone found by Joan Wiffen

Dinosaur toe fossil found by Joan Wiffen

Joan Wiffen, who found hard evidence that dinosaurs had inhabited New Zealand, died this month aged 87.

I’m not a scientist, but I do have an interest in the history of science, and even I can see that Wiffen made historically significant and far-reaching contributions to scientific thinking.

First findings

In 1975, Wiffen found something remarkable in a remote stream in nothern Hawkes Bay - a fossilised tail ‘bone’ of a therapod. A therapod was a large (four metres long) meat-eating, two-legged dinosaur related to the tyrannosaur.

It took four years for the specimen to be identified but the wait proved something previously unthinkable: that dinosaurs had inhabited New Zealand, or at least its geological predecessor. This meant that there was a past connection to Gondwanaland.  

Nickname from work

Joan Wiffen, who was a self-taught scientist, gained the nickname the ‘Dinosaur Lady’ for obvious reasons. She also received formal awards, like an honorary doctorate, for her contributions to vertebrate palaeontology.

Find out more

Some of the fossils that Wiffen discovered are displayed in Awesome Forces at Te Papa. Many museum staff have fond memories of working with her on exhibitions. More details about Joan Wiffen’s life and work are on the National Library website.

In a chapter about ‘Zealandian Dinosaurs’, in their book In Search of Ancient New Zealand (2007), Hamish Campbell and Gerard Hutching also discuss the importance of Wiffen’s discoveries.

By Kirstie Ross | Posted in Events, Exhibitions, Fossils | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)
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