Iguanodon: Nose to Tail. Part 1 - I. bernissartensis skeletal reconstruction

Iguanodon bernissartensis is the type species for its genus and a very well-researched animal, thanks to a relative abundance of well-preserved specimens that have been known to science for many decades (many beautiful specimens were famously first unearthed in a Belgian mine in 1878, and are on display at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), as explored in an earlier blog entry).
However, despite being the proud owner of a bookshelf bursting with good-quality texts, I have found it surprisingly challenging to source really detailed high-resolution skeletal reconstructions of this; one of my favourite beasts.

So, what's an artist to do when she finds her palaeo-reference lacking? Well, get started making lemonade of course! And then do something useful, like draw a skeleton:

Iguanodon bernissartensis skeletal. Copyright AVS Turner 2018

This skeletal took quite some time to put together and is based on a mish-mash of existing skeletals and my own photographic reference taken from the specimens on display at RBINS. The silhouette behind is currently fairly rough, as I haven't yet had a chance to move on to properly mapping the musculature onto the bones; that's a later step in the process. 

For this reconstruction I wanted to infer depth (omitted from many skeletals) and show as many foraminae, osteological correlates (muscle attachment sites on the bone) and ridges as possible, since these can be omitted or shown inconsistently in many drawings. Since many of these came from my photo reference, I cannot promise that the placement of these will be entirely accurate due to the difficulty of shooting precise reference images in a working exhibition space and the preservational distortion of the Bernissart specimens in question. However, given the challenges that this project presented, I am pretty happy with the results: especially the knee and ankle areas, which are often simplified and flattened in a lot of views.

The next step in my exploration of Iguanodon: Nose to Tail will be anterior and dorsal views (maybe even an oblique view, if time permits?) and to add labelling to key bones and structures before moving on to viscera and deep musculature.