The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World

Mantell’s uphill struggle to get his ideas accepted by the experts was not unique. One amateur geologist, Robert Bakewell, who was not allowed to join the Geological Society although he wrote a popular book, Introduction to Geology, wrote frankly about the difficulties. ‘There is a certain prejudice,’ he said, ‘among the members of the Scientific Societies in London and Paris, which makes them unwilling to believe that persons residing in provincial towns or the country can do anything important for science.’ William Smith, the surveyor who pioneered studies of strata in England and was also not a member, once remarked: ‘the theory of geology was in possession of one class of men [at the Geological Society] and the practice in another’. Gideon Mantell, an amateur from the provinces with none of the trappings of the upper classes, was very much an outsider. The disappointment he felt at the rejection of his ideas, and his failure to obtain recognition for his giant lizards, was recorded in his diary:

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