Back in 1878, two mine workers discovered strange fossilised remains in a coal mine in the small Belgian town of Bernissart. After being examined by Belgian zoologist and palaeontologist Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, the fossils were identified as belonging to the dinosaur iguanodon. Soon, curious scientists from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences had descended on the mine hoping for more finds. And they got their wish: some 30 relatively complete iguanodon skeletons, as well as a treasure trove of plant, fish and crocodilian fossils, were eventually unearthed there.
Extracting large dinosaur skeletons, some up to 11 metres (36ft) in length, from the bottom of a mine would be a logistical challenge even now – but it certainly was in the nineteenth century. After carefully exposing each skeleton and recording its position in the mine, workers divided each one into manageable blocks, explains David Norman in “Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction”. Each carefully numbered block was encased in a protective plaster of Paris casing before its journey to the museum. “Back in Brussels, the blocks were reassembled from the records, rather like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle,” Norman writes.
It’s at this point that artist Gustave Lavalette stepped in. Commissioned especially for the Bernissart project, he sketched each skeleton “in its death pose” before any further work was undertaken to prepare the extraordinary finds for display. (The Bernissart iguanodons are exhibited to this day in the Belgium museum’s Dinosaur Gallery, the largest room in Europe devoted entirely to dinosaurs!)
