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The Dragons of Old Time-Dinosaurs: Mantell

Dr. G. A. Mantell says, "Fossils have been eloquently and appropriately termed Medals of Creation," and the eloquent passage by which those words are followed may be transcribed here. He goes on to say, "For as an accomplished numismatist, even when the inscription of an ancient and unknown coin is illegible, can from the half-obliterated effigy, and from the style of art, determine with precision the people by whom, and the period when, it was struck: in like manner the geologist can decipher these natural memorials, interpret the hieroglyphics with which they are inscribed, and from apparently the most insignificant relics trace the history of beings of whom no other records are extant, and ascertain the forms and habits of unknown types of organisation whose races are swept from the face of the earth, ere the creation of man, and the creatures which are his contemporaries. Well might the illustrious Bergmann exclaim, 'Sunt instar nummorum memoralium quæ de præteritis globi nostri fatis testantur, ubi omnia silent monumenta historica." Geology owes a deep debt of gratitude to the late Dr. Gideon A. Mantell, who, during the intervals of a laborious professional life, collected and described the remains of several strange extinct reptiles, and wrote a number of works on geology, such as served in his day to advance the science to which he was so enthusiastically devoted (see p. 159).