The Legacy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of Fossils in America

by Keith Stewart Thomson

Overview

This exciting book tells the story of America's golden period of fossil discovery, the years from 1750 to 1890. Replete with high adventure, ruthless competing bone hunters, and previously unimagined scientific discoveries, the book sets the story of paleontology in the context of American history and the opening of the West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300151848
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	02/29/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Keith Thomson is professor emeritus of natural history, University of Oxford, where he also served as director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Former president of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, professor of biology and dean at Yale, he is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and twelve books, including Before Darwin and The Common but Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays, both published by Yale University Press. He lives in Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Tables ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xv

Part 1 The Jeffersonians

One Fossil Hunters on the Frontier 3

Two Big Bone Lick 10

Three Franklin, Jefferson, and the Incognitum 24

Four Jefferson's "Great-Claw" and a World About to Change 34

Five The First American Dinosaurs: An Eighteenth-Century Mystery Story 41

Six Fossils and Show Business: Mr. Peale's Mastodon 46

Part 2 Fossils and Geology

Seven Fossils and Extinction: Dangerous Ideas 57

Eight Mary Anning's World 72

Nine An American Natural Science 86

Ten An American Geology 98

Eleven Bad Lands: No Time for Ideas 105

Twelve Dr. Leidy's Dinosaur 122

Thirteen Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden 126

Part 3 Giant Saurians and Horned Mammals

Fourteen Kansas and a New Regime 147

Fifteen Entry of the Gladiators 155

Sixteen Riding the Rails 168

Seventeen The First Yale College Expedition 177

Eighteen The Competition Begins 191

Nineteen Buffalo Land: Who Was Professor Paleozoic? 200

Twenty 1872: The Year of Conflict 211

Twenty-One The Case of the Great Horned Mammals 229

Twenty-Two Going Separate Ways 242

Twenty-Three Two into Four Won't Go 254

Twenty-Four To the Black Hills 263

Twenty-Five To the Judith River 271

Part 4 Toward the Twentieth Century

Twenty-Six The Rise of Dinosaurs 279

Twenty-Seven The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 295

Twenty-Eight Going Public 310

Twenty-Nine 1890: The End of the Beginning 317

Appendixes

The Geological Column 335

Leidy on Evolution 338

Cope on Evolution 341

Notes 345

Index 371