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( previous books )
26. The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan
The Dragon Seekers, subtitled How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for Darwin, describes the lives and work of several 19th century "fossilists", the predecessors of today's paleontologists. He talks mostly about Mary Anning, Thomas Hawkins, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, and Richard Owen.
Mary Anning was an interesting figure. She was a woman of low social status, the daughter of poor laborers, who were Dissenters (that is, not members of the dominant Church of England). Despite the handicaps of being a woman, being poor, and of her religious background, she came to contribute a great deal to the developing science. At the age of just 12, she discovered the first pleisiosaur, and made a number of other important discoveries. She had begun, like her family and many other locals, collecting fossils to sell to rich tourists, but she was more than just a collector. She studied the fossils, read everything she could about other fossils and about zoology, and even dissected living relatives of the fossils she was finding to understand more about them. In her time, however, she did not get anywhere near the credit she deserved. Wealthy male paleontologists would publish papers and give speeches about the new discoveries, without mentioning her, or, at most, only in indirect references such as "the proprietor of the fossil". She was never allowed to join the Geological Society, although she was given a posthumous honorary membership a few years after her death, and her name was rarely mentioned in those meetings, although her importance was recognized, and she did have some fame in her time. But she never had any formal academic honors, nor did she ever make money from books that were published on her finds. The only money she ever made was in selling her finds. As one friend of hers reported "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal by publishing workds, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages"
Thomas Hawkins was a rather eccentric man, who was infamous for adding to his fossils to give them the appearance of completeness, while obscuring which parts were original and which parts were added. He became the center of a major scandal over fossils he'd sold to a London museum which were found to be artificially enhanced, a scandal which found its way into Parliamentary hearings.
William Buckland was a conservative, who continued to support Catastrophism, long after it had been discredited. Catastrophism was the belief that the world had been visited by repeated catastrophes (of which Noah's flood was the most recent), massive disasters that wiped out life and were followed by new Creations, a theory devised to explain the presence of extinct animals, and the lack of modern animals in earlier eras, in an attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with the fossil evidence. He refused to accept that humans had ever coexisted with extinct animals, since that would imply that God's creations could fail. Humans belonged the the most recent creation. He was an eccentric, and a popular lecturer at Oxford. In his later years, however, his mind began to fade, and his eccentricity grew into outright madness.
Gideon Mantell was, along with his fossiling, a social reformer and a medical doctor, and a rather progressive person for his time, but a man with a tragic family life. One of his daughters died at the young age of 14, and his wife and other children left him, although he did later reconcile with his children, but never his wife.
Finally, Richard Owen. Owen was a major figure in zoology. He dissected countless animals, comparing their anatomies, and comparing them to the fossils he found. He was the first to realize that the Megalosaurus,Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus were part of a new type of reptiles, which he named Dinosauria. He pointed out a number of major anatomical differences between them and present-day reptiles, and produced rather remarkable estimates of the full sizes of those creatures, which, at that point, had only been discovered as partial skeletons, striking down the overestimates that previous paleontologists had given them, by naively scaling up from modern-day reptiles. Owen was a friend of Charles Darwin, and provided many of the key pieces of evidence that Darwin would later use in his Origin of the Species (although Owen had no knowledge of Darwin's work until it was published). It is ironic that Owen's work proved so important for Darwin's, as Owen was bitterly opposed to Darwin's theories. The publication of Origin destroyed his friendship with Darwin, and to his death (in 1892), he remained steadfastly opposed to Darwin's theories.
26. The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan
The Dragon Seekers, subtitled How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for Darwin, describes the lives and work of several 19th century "fossilists", the predecessors of today's paleontologists. He talks mostly about Mary Anning, Thomas Hawkins, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, and Richard Owen.
Mary Anning was an interesting figure. She was a woman of low social status, the daughter of poor laborers, who were Dissenters (that is, not members of the dominant Church of England). Despite the handicaps of being a woman, being poor, and of her religious background, she came to contribute a great deal to the developing science. At the age of just 12, she discovered the first pleisiosaur, and made a number of other important discoveries. She had begun, like her family and many other locals, collecting fossils to sell to rich tourists, but she was more than just a collector. She studied the fossils, read everything she could about other fossils and about zoology, and even dissected living relatives of the fossils she was finding to understand more about them. In her time, however, she did not get anywhere near the credit she deserved. Wealthy male paleontologists would publish papers and give speeches about the new discoveries, without mentioning her, or, at most, only in indirect references such as "the proprietor of the fossil". She was never allowed to join the Geological Society, although she was given a posthumous honorary membership a few years after her death, and her name was rarely mentioned in those meetings, although her importance was recognized, and she did have some fame in her time. But she never had any formal academic honors, nor did she ever make money from books that were published on her finds. The only money she ever made was in selling her finds. As one friend of hers reported "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal by publishing workds, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages"
Thomas Hawkins was a rather eccentric man, who was infamous for adding to his fossils to give them the appearance of completeness, while obscuring which parts were original and which parts were added. He became the center of a major scandal over fossils he'd sold to a London museum which were found to be artificially enhanced, a scandal which found its way into Parliamentary hearings.
William Buckland was a conservative, who continued to support Catastrophism, long after it had been discredited. Catastrophism was the belief that the world had been visited by repeated catastrophes (of which Noah's flood was the most recent), massive disasters that wiped out life and were followed by new Creations, a theory devised to explain the presence of extinct animals, and the lack of modern animals in earlier eras, in an attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with the fossil evidence. He refused to accept that humans had ever coexisted with extinct animals, since that would imply that God's creations could fail. Humans belonged the the most recent creation. He was an eccentric, and a popular lecturer at Oxford. In his later years, however, his mind began to fade, and his eccentricity grew into outright madness.
Gideon Mantell was, along with his fossiling, a social reformer and a medical doctor, and a rather progressive person for his time, but a man with a tragic family life. One of his daughters died at the young age of 14, and his wife and other children left him, although he did later reconcile with his children, but never his wife.
Finally, Richard Owen. Owen was a major figure in zoology. He dissected countless animals, comparing their anatomies, and comparing them to the fossils he found. He was the first to realize that the Megalosaurus,Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus were part of a new type of reptiles, which he named Dinosauria. He pointed out a number of major anatomical differences between them and present-day reptiles, and produced rather remarkable estimates of the full sizes of those creatures, which, at that point, had only been discovered as partial skeletons, striking down the overestimates that previous paleontologists had given them, by naively scaling up from modern-day reptiles. Owen was a friend of Charles Darwin, and provided many of the key pieces of evidence that Darwin would later use in his Origin of the Species (although Owen had no knowledge of Darwin's work until it was published). It is ironic that Owen's work proved so important for Darwin's, as Owen was bitterly opposed to Darwin's theories. The publication of Origin destroyed his friendship with Darwin, and to his death (in 1892), he remained steadfastly opposed to Darwin's theories.
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