Copy Book Archive

The Living Past High above the roof of the Amazonian rainforest, Professor Challenger sees something that eerily reminds him of home.
1912
Music: Sir William Sterndale Bennett

© Ballista, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

A cast of a fossilised ‘Iguanodon bernissartensis’, at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. This three-toed, five-fingered dinosaur, first discovered in a Belgian coal mine in 1878, is evidently the dinosaur imagined by Conan Doyle in his adventure tale. Modern research suggests that the Iguanodon spent most of its time on all fours, and that its tail was held erect.

The Living Past
High on a remote plateau amidst the Brazilian rainforest, Edward Malone, Professor Challenger and their party of explorers come across fresh, oozing prints in the mud. Lord John Roxton sees three toes and thinks ‘bird’, but the sight reminds Professor Challenger of Sussex — and quite a different creature.
Abridged

“BY George, this must be the trail of the father of all birds!”

If it were indeed a bird — and what animal could leave such a mark? — its foot was so much larger than an ostrich’s that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two cartridges into his elephant-gun.

“But what do you make of this?” cried Professor Summerlee, triumphantly, pointing to what looked like the huge print of a five-fingered human hand appearing among the three-toed marks.

“Wealden!” cried Challenger, in an ecstasy. “I’ve seen them in the Wealden clay.* It is a creature walking erect upon three-toed feet, and occasionally putting one of its five-fingered forepaws upon the ground. Not a bird, my dear Roxton — not a bird.”

“A beast?”

“No; a reptile — a dinosaur. Nothing else could have left such a track. They puzzled a worthy Sussex doctor some ninety years ago;* but who in the world could have hoped — hoped — to have seen a sight like that?”

The discovery of three-toed, five-fingered prints in the clay at Crowborough in Sussex (in an area known as The Weald) caused a stir in 1909, and caught Conan Doyle’s imagination. They belonged to the Iguanodon (pictured above), first discovered in a coal mine in Bernissart, Belgium, in 1878.

Obstetrician Dr Gideon Mantell (1790-1852). However, the fossil fragments for which he coined the name ‘Iguanodon’ in the 1820s are now called ‘Therosaurus’. ‘Iguanodon’ had come to be used so indiscriminately that the classification was broken up, and in the reallocations Mantell’s specimen was stripped of the name he had invented.

Précis

In Aurthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World’, explorers in South America discover tracks of what would appear to be a bird far larger than an ostrich, or maybe two different but enormous animals. But Professor Challenger thinks back to startling discoveries in Sussex some years before, and realises that the tracks belong to a dinosaur. (55 / 60 words)

Source

Abridged from ‘The Lost World’ (1912), by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Suggested Music

Piano Concerto No. 4 in F Minor (1838)

3: Presto: Agitato

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875)

Performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with Malcolm Binns (piano) conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite.

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