The Mosasaur pays a visit back to Maastricht

The original skull of the first known Mosasaur is back in Maastricht! The famous fossil is the prime item on display until June 21, 2009 at the Natural History Museum in the new exhibition: ‘Darwin, Cuvier et le Grand Animal de Maestricht’.

It is the first time that the skull of the Mosasaur can be seen again in Maastricht since it was taken to Paris by the French revolutionary troops in 1794.

“This story has received so much coverage in the past few weeks,” says Dr John Jagt, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in Maastricht. “On television, in all the national newspapers… I think our number of visitors for the coming four months will be humongous!”

As we sit down over a cup of coffee in the cosy dining room of the museum, Dr Jagt starts recounting the unearthing of the unique skull in Mount St Peter.

“The exact date and conditions of the find are unknown because the people who extracted the block were illiterate and therefore did not leave any written records, but it probably happened between 1770 and 1774.

“There are many legends and anecdotes about the story, and no one seems to know for sure who discovered the skull first and how the French managed to get hold of it. One story says that the specimen was probably sold to a man named Hoffman, a Swiss born military sergeant living in Maastricht. Another more plausible story is that a clergyman, a certain Father Godding, claimed the skull because it was discovered in the ground under his house on Mount St Peter. He kept the skull in a sort of glass house and let people come and see it.

“Meanwhile the word went around, and people in Paris heard that a fossil of a previously unknown animal, one that was not described in the Bible, had been unearthed.

“After the French Revolution in 1789, the new revolutionary government in France wanted to establish a new social and philosophical order. The discovery of the mosasaur provided it with the perfect opportunity to question the traditional Christian belief in creation, for how could the Mosasaur have survived the big flood, since it wasn’t present in Noah’s ark? Could the biblical story have been inaccurate?

“When the French revolutionary troops captured Maastricht in 1794, they were ordered by decree to take possession of the specimen and to bring it back to Paris, so that it could be studied by scientists. The French geologist Barthelemy de Faujas de Saint-Fond documented the event.

“This Faujas de Saint-Fond seems to have been quite a funny character, in the way that he would distort history so to speak. He said, “We will take this specimen because we’re interested in it. The Province of Meuse inférieure is now part of France so it’s a French thing, part of French heritage, and we will take it to France.”

“There is actually a rumour saying that the soldiers were told that whoever would find and retrieve the specimen would receive 600 bottles of the finest wine,” says Dr Jagt, laughing at the idea. “There are a lot of legends surrounding this story, and one that pops up all the time in all kinds of literature, is that Napoleon Bonaparte himself was involved… but it was probably some sergeant from Corsica or something like that, because the real Napoleon was crowned much later.”

“There may be some clues in the French military archives but the story as we know it for the time being is full of holes. We’re not sure of what exactly happened between the French troops and the previous owner of the specimen. It appears that a niece of Father Godding, Rosa, later started a court case against the French authorities to try and get the specimen back, a suggestion perhaps that there was some sort of struggle when the skull was taken.

A sensitive topic in Maastricht
“Everyone in Maastricht is extremely excited that the Mosasaur is home again, even though it is only on a loan basis,” says Dr Jagt.

For many Maastrichters, the specimen is part of the city’s history and heritage. There is even a village close to Mount St Peter which has a carnival association called “Mosasaurus”.

“The Mosasaur lives in peoples mind, this is its birth place, it was here that it was discovered first, and it was named after the river… There is a certain pride in these things,” Dr Jagt adds.

Although he acknowledges that a loan is not quite the same as keeping it permanently, Dr Jagt says that the most important thing is that the specimen is being preserved. “If it had remained in Hoffman’s or Godding’s collection, who knows where it would have been now? Probably sold to the Americans,” jokes Dr Jagt. “At least now it’s still in Europe.”

“Moreover, today we have the techniques to replace the original by a synthetic copy, which most visitors to the museum don’t mind.”

It took the Maastricht museum two long years of negotiations with the French museum of Natural History in Paris to finally obtain the specimen on loan. The suggestion was made that it could be lent to Maastricht to feature in an exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the originator of the modern theory of evolution.

“The main problem was is that the agreement had to be reached at a very high ministerial level. The French museum especially needed the insurance that the Dutch would not claim the specimen once it would be in Maastricht”, explains Dr Jagt.

The fossil also needed to be x-rayed to make sure that it was sturdy enough to be transported, and it was agreed that technicians from the Paris museum would check the condition of the Mosasaur at its arrival in Maastricht and upon its return in Paris.

“We made several attempts to get the specimen back before,” says Dr Jagt, “but they failed each time, possibly because of the decision of one or two individuals. The difference this time was that the atmosphere was right, and there was a bigger context within which we could operate, that of the Darwin year. And our exhibit is not just about Darwin it’s also about Cuvier, a Frenchman… maybe that helped!”

Dr Jagt emphasizes that the Maastricht Natural History Museum has no qualms with the French museum, and that their relationship is “excellent”.

Listening to Dr Jagt however, it seems to me that perhaps the more gracious thing for the French to do would be to return the specimen to its place of origin. It is hard to deny, even with my own French background, that the skull of the Mosasaur would have a more significant meaning in Maastricht.
Yet I can understand the French position on the subject, as the specimen might never have become so famous or stayed so well preserved had it not been taken to Paris. Thus perhaps the answer to this dilemma lies in the current agreement between Maastricht and Paris, which allows for both museums to benefit from the specimen.

Visitors to the exhibition will learn not only the story around the discovery of the specimen, but also how it fitted within Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“I would like our exhibition to set visitors into thinking about how the earth has evolved, says Dr Jagt, “and to realise that we too are products of this evolution, that we are part of nature, and that with time we too could very well become extinct, if that’s what nature wants…”

Just like the Mosasaur.

By Amandine de Rosnay

Amandine de Rosnay is a Mauritian/French student at University College Maastricht. She is now focusing her studies in Social Sciences, more specifically in international relations and law.

More information:
Natural History Museum Maastricht

The Mosasaur and the theory of evolution

Long before Darwin wrote his study On the Origin of Species, people were already thinking about evolution on the basis of this find, although they didn’t have the word yet. Within a few months after the “Le grand animal de Maestricht” arrived in Paris, the French zoologist George Cuvier had already started a correspondence with scientists in Holland about the nature of the beast. “Was it a crocodile or a tooth whale? Or some kind of lizard?” The problem with this specimen is that it had teeth not only in the upper and the lower jaw but also in the upper mouth roof. Could the animal have used these teeth to work its prey into the stomach?