Object of the Month – October 2023

The Museum’s ‘Object of the Month’ provides an opportunity to explore interesting and unusual objects from our stores.

October’s Object of the Month is a fragment of bone from a dinosaur, probably Iguanodon. Teeth from the dinosaur were found in Sussex, and first described and named by the English geologist Gideon Mantell in 1825.

The name means iguana-tooth (‘odon’ is Greek for ‘tooth’), and comes from the resemblance of the teeth to modern iguana teeth, only much bigger.

Iguanodon was the second dinosaur to be named thanks to the discovery of fossils, after Megalosaurus.
The first person to use the word ‘dinosaurs’ to describe a group of giant, lizard-like animals was the English biologist and palaeontologist Richard Owen.

Visit the museum to see this and two more items from Lord Braybrooke’s personal collection in October.

Image: Iguanodon bone fragment © Saffron Walden Museum