| Product: |
The Dinosaur Hunters - Deborah Cadbury |
| Date: |
28/04/03 (78 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: I got paid - that means I can go and buy stuff
Disadvantages: Our whole office reeks of paint fumes
As a young lad I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I think all boys are, and any that aren't are likely to grow up to become serial killers. But pity the poor children of centuries gone by. They didn't have dinosaurs back then. I've a feeling that all the cholera, lack of dental care and being forced up chimneys would have been a lot more tolerable if only they'd had a few toy dinosaurs to play with. Even the idea of dinosaurs would probably have sweetened the pill - it's a pretty amazing concept when you think about it, thousands of frankly unlikely gigantic lizards roaming around all over England, eating each other.
No one knew about dinosaurs before about 1830. This book describes the discovery of dinosaurs by plucky Victorian scientists. (When I say that you're probably all thinking of Peter Cushing building a giant drill and finding dinosaurs at the Earth's core. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's not quite what happened. Would to God it were.)
Quite a few dinosaur bones had been discovered before the Nineteenth Century, but no one had really thought to look at them too closely. Although plenty of remains were found all over the world, the book confines itself largely to what was going on in Britain. It was in Britain that most of the important early work was done, and where the word 'dinosaur' was invented. Later on, of course, the emphasis moved away from Britain, as most of the really cool dinosaurs were discovered elsewhere. But the groundwork was laid here. The story of the discovery of the first identified prehistoric species and the gradual realisation that the world wasn't quite as people had always assumed it was makes for fascinating reading. The events and discoveries detailed in the book are the beginning of the most radical shift in how the world was understood since Copernicus, which is surely enough of a reason to want to read it, even if you are a serial killer.
Early Victorian
scientists came to suspect that maybe the world wasn't created in seven days after all. The infant science of geology proved that the landscape as we know it was created gradually over thousands of years through slow and steady processes, rather than springing fully formed from the hands of a creator. It was also postulated that the Earth must be a great deal older than theological tradition allowed. The geologists' findings even suggested that the Great Flood may well not have happened, or that if it did it had left very little impression on the world. These were very controversial ideas, and laid the groundwork for the far more controversial theories of evolution.
There was a huge flurry of interest in fossils at about this time. They'd always been around, but now people started to study them in far greater detail. And the picture that gradually emerged - of large carnivorous reptiles in the oceans, and huge armour plated herbivores roaming the countryside - was astonishing. The whole idea of dinosaurs is still pretty freaky today, and we've known about them for our entire lives. To the Victorians they were a bolt from the blue, inspiring either awe or incredulity. The idea faced huge opposition from religious leaders, of course. They wouldn't accept the concept of extinction - why would an infallible deity have created creatures that would die out? And why are they not mentioned in Genesis?
It's very interesting to read about the gradual discovery of all this, and the slow change in attitudes and assumptions that accompanied the discoveries. It took a long time for these ideas to take shape in the way we understand them now, and there were several hiccups along the way. (For instance, only possessing an incomplete skeleton, it was assumed that Iguanadon must have walked on all fours and had a far wider and flatter head than it actually did. The old Victorian models of dinosaurs at Crystal Palace - recently repainted - a
re a lovely testament to people getting things wrong in truly spectacular fashion.)
It's a great story, and like all good stories it has a hero and a villain. Gideon Mantell (hooray!) was a country doctor whose passion for fossils led to him collecting ridiculous numbers of them. He faced years of indifference from the scientific establishment and his life was dogged by tragedy. In spite of all this he carried on studying and collecting fossils until his death, leaving a string of important discoveries behind him. And then there was Richard Owen (boooo!), Britain's leading anatomist. He tended to pass other people's research off as his own and ruthlessly dealt with rivals or perceived rivals, including poor old Mantell. An unpleasant, arrogant man, he invented the name 'dinosaur' and founded the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.
Other notable characters include Mary Anning, the beachcomber who discovered the first Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs (and who lived a rather tragic life herself) and William Buckland. Buckland, Britain's premier geological authority, was a noted eccentric (one of his hobbies was trying to eat a sample of as many different animal species as he possibly could - nice), who was at the forefront of palaeontology for a while. Ultimately he couldn't reconcile the new realities that science was throwing at him with his religious beliefs, and went mad. Poor guy.
All of which, and more, is described in this book. Deborah Cadbury makes it eminently readable, with plenty of entertaining anecdotes and a way of writing about science that even I can understand. A cracking piece of popular history that I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in dinosaurs, the history of science or the Victorians. There are quite a few pictures throughout, although there could perhaps have been a few more (I always think that books need more pictures, though, so perhaps that's just me).
And th
at's where dinosaurs come from. I still need to find some evidence for my own theory of how they became extinct (they were hunted to extinction by Martian tourists, obviously), but until I can do that you'd be strongly advised to read this.
Published by Fourth Estate, 384 pages, ISBN 1857029631.
Summary:
|
|
