King of the Dinosaur Hunters

by Lowell Dingus

Overview

Every year millions of museum visitors marvel at the skeletons of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures discovered by John Bell Hatcher whose life is every bit as fascinating as the mighty bones and fossils he unearthed. Hatcher helped discover and mount much of the Carnegie Museum's world famous, 150 million-year-old skeleton of Diplodocus, whose skeleton has captivated our collective imaginations for over a century. But that wasn’t all Hatcher discovered. During a now legendary collecting campaign in Wyoming, Hatcher discovered a 66 million-year-old horned dinosaur, Torosaurus, as well as the first scientifically significant set of skeletons from its evolutionary cousin, Triceratops. Refusing to restrict his talents to enormous dinosaurs, he also discovered the first significant sample of mammal teeth from our relatives that lived 66 million years ago. The teeth might have been minute, but this extraordinary discovery filled a key gap in humanity’s own evolutionary history.Nearly one hundred and twenty-five years after Hatcher’s monumental “hunts” ended, acclaimed paleontologist Lowell Dingus invites us to revisit Hatcher’s captivating expeditions and marvel at this real-life Indiana Jones and the vital role he played in our understanding of paleontology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681779300
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	12/04/2018
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	47 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Lowell Dingus, Ph.D., is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as well as at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He has directed numerous significant fossil exhibits and has led various paleontological expeditions around the world, including the Patagonian excavation that uncovered the first fossilized skin from an embryonic dinosaur. He has coauthored several books, including Walking on Eggs and The Mistaken Extinction. Lowell lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Glossary of Genera ix

Prologue xxiii

Section I 1861-1884 1

1 Becoming Marsh's Minion 3

2 Marsh: The Master 12

Section II 1884-1893 29

3 Wrestling with Rhinos, as well as Authority 31

4 Messin' with Texas and Returning for Rhinos 41

5 Thunder Beasts 56

6 Tracking Triceratops and Mining Mini-Mammals 85

7 Pondering Other Options 104

8 Hail the Hadrosaurs and Trumpet Torossurus 129

9 An Unexpected Ending 152

Section III 1893-1900 179

10 From Princeton to the Plains with an Eye on Patagonia 181

11 A Tango with the Tides among Patagonian Panoramas 211

12 Discovery followed by Disease and Disappointment 239

Section IV 1900-1904 267

13 Carnegie's Colossus 269

14 Hatcher's Hiring and Shenanigans at Sheep Creek 290

15 Documenting Diplodocus along with a Massive Menagerie 318

16 An Eruption of Research and Astonishing Acquisitions 346

17 The Curtain Closes 378

18 Woe and Wrangling in the Wake 392

Epilogue 411

Appendix 1 Contracts and Agreements Between O. C. Marsh and J. B. Hatcher 427

Appendix 2 Year-By-Year Lists of Specimens Collected by Hatcher and His Field Crews 433

Bibliography for John Bell Hatcher 471

References Other Than Hatcher's Publications 475

Endnotes 481

Acknowledgments 503

Index 507

Editorial Reviews

11/15/2018

With this fascinating work, Dingus (research associate, American Museum of Natural History; coauthor, The Mistaken Extinction) eulogizes paleontologist John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904), known as "the king of the collectors." The author's enthusiasm for his subject is apparent; as is the volume of research he conducted to write this biography. While Hatcher is the central character, readers interested in the Bone Wars—a race in the American West between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope to collect the most fossils and describe more new species—will be rewarded with information about that saga's varied cast of characters. Complete with extensive appendixes detailing Hatcher's collections, this is a fitting addition to the oeuvre alongside Tom Rea's Bone Wars: The Excavation of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur. VERDICT An excellent new science biography that will be popular with readers who already have an interest in paleontology or those who would like to develop one.—Esther Jackson, New York Botanical Garden

Library Journal

10/08/2018
While it’s true that John Bell Hatcher (1861–1904) was one of the 19th century’s most prolific fossil hunters, this deeply flawed biography by Dingus (Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex, coauthor), an American Museum of Natural History research associate, does little to reveal his subject’s humanity or mystique. Although Dingus provides excruciating detail about the many fossils Hatcher collected throughout western North America and shipped back to Yale, Princeton, and the Carnegie Museum beginning in 1884, virtually no information is presented about any other collector, so the reader lacks any context to judge Hatcher’s record. Much of the material presented arises from Hatcher’s letters to his employers, dealing with mundane matters like salaries and reimbursements for himself and his assistants and conveying little of the excitement of scientific discovery. Remarkably few personal facts appear—it isn’t until a full year after the fact that Dingus reveals Hatcher was married, and not until the penultimate chapter that he had seven children, three of whom died before the age of four. The book does give paleontology enthusiasts a sense of the challenges involved in 19th-century fossil hunting, at least in Hatcher’s case, but leaves them with little insight into the man himself. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

The definitive account of the life and times of a singular man and a superlative fossil hunter.

Science.com (Past praise for Lowell Dings)

A rollicking recollection.

Discover Magazine (Past praise for Lowell Dingus)

"Brilliant. A must-read for anyone interested in dinosaurs, natural history, or discovery."

Patch

"Readers learn of the great hardships of late-nineteenth-century paleontology and where to see Hatcher’s mounted dinosaurs today."

Booklist

"Palaeontologist Lowell Dingus exhaustively tracks Hatcher’s short but storied life, from early work for luminaries such as Othniel Charles Marsh to the astounding digs in fossil hotspots from Kansas to Patagonia that studded Hatcher’s starry scientific trajectory."

Nature

2018-09-18

From a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, an exhaustive biography of an adventurous bone hunter, a leading figure in the heroic age of American paleontology.

Son of an Illinois farmer and fascinated by fossils, John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) worked his way through Yale and impressed superiors who sent him west to where rich, new fossil beds had produced a rush of professional diggers and amateur fortune hunters. He quickly proved his value, finding and shipping east tons of precious fossils and fossil-bearing material but also showing a precision and delicacy in dealing with the specimens—which, despite being rock, are delicate—that became the accepted technique. For 20 years, he was in great demand, producing a steady stream of discoveries from digs in the United States and Patagonia despite working under often miserable conditions. Promoted to curator of paleontology at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh in 1900, Hatcher, who had health problems throughout his life, died suddenly at age 42. Hatcher's prolific correspondence to his employers has been largely preserved, and his discoveries sit in museums across the world. This is ample raw material for an engaging biography, but Dingus (Hell Creek, Montana: America's Key to the Prehistoric Past, 2004, etc.) mostly draws on it to deliver an extremely detailed, chronological record of Hatcher's travels, travails, and discoveries, a relentless series of itineraries, equipment inventories, expenses, business quarrels, descriptions of bones discovered, their species, and ultimate destination, often including their museum catalog number in case readers want to look them up. The author also includes a 14-page glossary of genera.

There is no lack of fascinating anecdotes, but mostly this is a dense catalog that will primarily interest paleontology buffs. Readers searching for a history of the stormy late-19th-century dinosaur discoveries should try The Bonehunters' Revenge (1999) by David Rains Wallace.

Kirkus Reviews