Iguanodon

Iguanodon (IG-UAR-no-don) was a of the s. It was a / herbivore. It could stand on it's hindlimbs, and yet normally walk on all fours. If attacked, it could dissuade a predator with its powerful thumb spike.

Iguanodon has become quite famous as a result of its starring role in Dinosaur, but before that it helped people understand what dinosaurs really looked like. It was one of the first complete skeletons ever found. This allowed scientists who had never seen a complete dinosaur, to figure out what it would have looked like in life. In fact, the first time this common dinosaur was found as just a partial skeleton, scientists put its thumb spike on its nose!

This was only the second dinosaur to be described, after Megalosaurus. Its teeth were discovered in the early 1820's in England - these original fossils were "rediscovered" in the British Museum in 1977. As nothing like it had ever been described in scientific literature, the teeth of this creature were a puzzle that an amateur paleontologist named Gideon Mantell solved by comparing them to the teeth of living animals. Mantell found that the teeth looked like those of a modern iguana and named it Iguanodon. He speculated that it was a huge extinct version of this modern reptile. It was in 1878 in a coal mine in Belgium that 24 fairly complete and articulated specimens were found. Although they were of a larger species, they clearly showed what this creature looked like in life.

Download the Jurassic Park Institute Iguanodon fact card

More real-life information: Iguanodon at wikipedia.

Jurassic Park Franchise
This dinosaur was not seen in the first 2 films. It may have been present in the third film, in the scene where Alan Grant directs them to run "into the herd!" but so far only Parasaurolophus and Corythosaurus have been confirmed.

Jurassic Park Adventures
In the novel Jurassic Park Adventures: Survivor, which takes place during Eric Kirby's exile on Isla Sorna (Jurassic Park Adventures canon), a young Iguanodon, "Iggy ", appears. Iggy scares off a Raptor that was about to kill Eric. Later Eric encounters an entire Iguanodon herd in a green valley near a safe house. Eric tries to use Iggy to transport a electricity generator from the safe house to the InGen compound, but this plan fails when the herd is attacked by Velociraptors. Eric risks his life to save Iggy from the raptors.

Jurassic Park inspired games
]]but the Iguanodon was removed and replaced by Edmontosaurus.
 * Iguanodon is nr. 078 of the Herbivore Twos that can be created in Jurassic Park III: Park Builder.
 * Iguanodon was planned to appear in the game [[Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis|Jurassic Park Operation Genesis

Toy lines
an iguanadon figure appeared in the die cast series and came with an ankylosaurus