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The Dinosaur Hunters

The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story Of Scientific Rivalry And The Discovery Of The Prehistoric World

by Deborah Cadbury

5.00 out of 5 (1 ratings)

Format:
Paperback 
Pages:
386 
Publisher:
HarperCollins Publishers 
Publication Date:
02 July 2001 
Category:
Archaeology By Period / Region 
ISBN:
9781857029635 

Description

The story of two nineteenth-century scientists who revealed one of the most significant and exciting events in the natural history of this planet: the existence of dinosaurs. In 'The Dinosaur Hunters' Deborah Cadbury brilliantly recreates the remarkable story of the bitter rivalry between two men: Gideon Mantell uncovered giant bones in a Sussex quarry, became obsessed with the lost world of the reptiles and was driven to despair. Richard Owen, a brilliant anatomist, gave the extinct creatures their name and secured for himself unrivalled international acclaim.

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Showing 1-1 out of 1 reviews.

  • Chock full of dinosaurs! And cool 19th century science, when everything was a curiosity. So it's England and people have just started to realize that you could put fossils together to get giant skeletons. I was thinking about how insane that must have been -- nowadays, if you found a fossilized dinosaur skeleton in your backyard, it would be amazing but at least you'd start from the point of knowing what a dinosaur WAS. Imagine not knowing what dinosaurs were, and then finding the skeleton and realizing you had a FREAKISHLY GIANT LIZARD on your hands. This book mostly focused on Gideon Mantell, a mostly self-taught amateur fossil-hunter, and Richard Owen, also brilliant but apparently a bit of a jerk who did not play well with others. Overall, the book was interesting and painted a very understandable picture of the context in which this study and research was happening -- they were wrong about a lot of things (we now know), but the incredible thing is how much they got <i>right</i>.

    5.00 out of 5

    delphica

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