Therosaurus

Therosaurus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, 140–136 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Replica of one of the original teeth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	†Ornithischia
Suborder:	†Ornithopoda
Clade:	†Iguanodontia
Genus:	†Therosaurus Fitzinger, 1840
Type species
†Iguanodon anglicus Holl, 1829
Species
†Therosaurus anglicus (Holl, 1829)
Synonyms
Iguanodon anglicus Holl, 1829 Iguanodon mantelli Meyer, 1832

†Therosaurus anglicus (Holl, 1829)

Iguanodon anglicus Holl, 1829
Iguanodon mantelli Meyer, 1832

Therosaurus is a genus of ornithopod dinosaurs containing the single species Therosaurus anglicus, previously known as Iguanodon anglicus. Though important in the history of paleontology as being among the first dinosaur fossils ever named and described, because the species name Iguanodon anglicus was based on very fragmentary fossil remains (a collection of teeth), the name Iguanodon was later officially transferred to a different animal. This left Therosaurus (Ancient Greek: θήρα 'thera', hunting of wild beasts; Latin: anglicus, English) as the oldest available genus name for the genus containing historic but dubious teeth first discovered by Gideon Mantell in England.

The discovery of these teeth has long been accompanied by a popular legend. The story goes that Gideon Mantell's wife, Mary Ann, discovered the teeth of an "Iguanodon" in the strata of Tilgate Forest in Whitemans Green, Cuckfield, Sussex, England, in 1822 while her husband was visiting a patient. However, there is no evidence that Mantell took his wife with him while seeing patients. Furthermore, he admitted in 1851 that he himself had found the teeth. Not everyone agrees that the story is false, though. It is known from his notebooks that Mantell first acquired large fossil bones from the quarry at Whitemans Green in 1820. Because also theropod teeth were found, thus belonging to carnivores, he at first interpreted these bones, which he tried to combine into a partial skeleton, as those of a giant crocodile. In 1821 Mantell mentioned the find of herbivorous teeth and began to consider the possibility that a large herbivorous reptile was present in the strata. However, in his 1822 publication Fossils of the South Downs he as yet did not dare to suggest a connection between the teeth and his very incomplete skeleton, presuming that his finds presented two large forms, one carnivorous ("an animal of the Lizard Tribe of enormous magnitude"), the other herbivorous. In May 1822 he first presented the herbivorous teeth to the Geological Society of London but the members, among them William Buckland, dismissed them as fish teeth or the incisors of a rhinoceros from a Tertiary stratum. On 23 June 1823 Charles Lyell showed some to Georges Cuvier, during a soiree in Paris, but the famous French naturalist at once dismissed them as those of a rhinoceros. Though the very next day Cuvier retracted, Lyell reported only the dismissal to Mantell, who became rather diffident about the issue. In 1824 Buckland described Megalosaurus and was on that occasion invited to visit Mantell's collection. Seeing the bones on 6 March he agreed that these were of some giant saurian — though still denying it was a herbivore. Emboldened nevertheless, Mantell again sent some teeth to Cuvier, who answered on 22 June 1824 that he had determined that they were reptilian and quite possibly belonged to a giant herbivore. In a new edition that year of his Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles Cuvier admitted his earlier mistake, leading to an immediate acceptance of Mantell, and his new saurian, in scientific circles. Mantell tried to corroborate his theory further by finding a modern-day parallel among extant reptiles. In September 1824 he visited the Royal College of Surgeons but at first failed to find comparable teeth. However, assistant-curator Samuel Stutchbury recognised that they resembled those of an iguana he had recently prepared, albeit twenty times longer. Mantell did not describe his findings until 10 February 1825, when he presented a paper on the remains to the Royal Society of London.