However, in his 1822 publication Fossils of the South Downs he as yet did not dare to suggest a connection between the teeth and his very incomplete skeleton, presuming that his finds presented two large forms, one carnivorous ("an animal of the Lizard Tribe of enormous magnitude"), the other herbivorous. In 1821 Mantell mentioned the find of herbivorous teeth and began to consider the possibility that a large herbivorous reptile was present in the strata. Because also theropod teeth were found, thus belonging to carnivores, he at first interpreted these bones, which he tried to combine into a partial skeleton, as those of a giant crocodile. It is known from his notebooks that Mantell first acquired large fossil bones from the quarry at Whitemans Green in 1820. Other later authors agree that the story is not certainly false. Mantell had indeed found the first of the teeth later named Iguanodon. Furthermore, he admitted in 1851 that he himself had found the teeth, although he had previously stated in 1827 that Mrs. However, there is no evidence that Mantell took his wife with him while seeing patients. The story goes that Gideon Mantell's wife, Mary Ann, discovered the first teeth of an Iguanodon in the strata of Tilgate Forest in Whitemans Green, Cuckfield, Sussex, England, in 1822 while her husband was visiting a patient.
The discovery of Iguanodon has long been accompanied by a popular legend.
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