120 Million Year Old Hip Replacement!
One of the Sedgwick Museum's dinosaurs gets a long-awaited adjustment
Iguanodon bernissartensis is a 11 metre long, 5 metre tall dinosaur that dominates the entrance to the Sedgwick Museum at Cambridge. The skeleton was donated to the University in 1909, by Leopold II (King of the Belgians) as part of the celebrations in Cambridge associated with the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
At the time an honorary Cambridge degree was conferred upon Louis Dollo (principal scientist at the Royal Museum of Natural History, Brussels) who was the scientific describer of this amazing fossil skeleton. "Dollo's Law" of the irreversibility of evolution was also an important contribution to evolutionary studies at this time.
The original skeleton was part of an extraordinary horde of 39 nearly complete skeletons found in a mine at the colliery of Bernissart (near Mons in southern Belgium) in the late 1870s.
During the reconstruction of this skeleton and its mounting for exhibition in Brussels (one of the first complete dinosaur skeletons ever viewed), all of which was supervised by a young Louis Dollo, a few mistakes were made. One of these mistakes is being rectified at present. The dinosaur's hip bones (known technically as ischia) were inadvertently swapped (left for right). Every cast of this dinosaur in the world (and there are specimens in Buenos Aires, London, Moscow, New York, Oxford, and Paris) has this same mistake perpetuated. However as part of the renovation of the gallery the Museum has asked Shelford Engineering to step in and make new armatures so that the hip bones are where they should be.
Malcolm Hurst (Shelford Engineering) said: "When we were asked to quote on this unusual job it was greeted with interest and enthusiasm from the small team of engineers. My first thoughts were to design a steelwork support system based on the original steelwork. Together with engineer Terry Mynott we agreed to use three original holes in the existing steel frame would give a datum start point; from this point with minimum drilling on site the basic supports were manufactured with advice from the museum staff and Dr David Norman. Bends and different design techniques were tried and tested until the finished position was achieved The team found the work to be very enjoyable and had a real sense of achievement when standing back to see the end result."
Dr David Norman (Museum Director) commented: "Having spent the early part of my career studying this dinosaur in considerable detail I am delighted to have an opportunity to correct one of the glaring errors in its anatomy, thanks to money from the MLA's Designation Challenge Fund, and skills of Shelford Engineering."
12 May 2006
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