Mary Ann Mantell
Mary Ann Mantell (née Woodhouse; 9 April 1795 – 20 October 1869) was a British fossil collector and the wife of the British paleontologist Gideon Mantell. She is credited – although this is disputed – with the discovery of the first fossils of Iguanodon and provided several pen and ink sketches of the fossils for her husband's scientific description of the Iguanodon. Iguanodon discovery Per the Mantells' account, it was Mary Ann who discovered the fossils which were later identified as belonging to Iguanodon; Gideon Mantell "at first endorsed but recanted" this story after their divorce; "doubt has been poured on the somewhat romanticized claim both on her involvement and the date ... with the suggestion that the Mantells probably bought the first teeth off local quarrymen." Per the Mantells' original story, in 1822, while Mary Ann Mantell was accompanying her husband in Sussex as he was visiting a patient, she discovered tooth-shaped fossils on the side of the road. She presented these fossils to him. Her husband then proceeded to send Mary’s fossils via Charles Lyell who brought them to Georges Cuvier, who initially told Lyell he thought the teeth were from a rhinoceros; he retracted that statement the