Deborah Cadbury

The Dinosaur Hunters

Fourth Estate, London, 2000

This review is based upon the German translation by Monika Niehaus.

Monika says:

Everybody with an interest in dinosaurs has heard at one point or another that it was British palaeontologist Richard Owen who invented the word "dinosaurs", meaning "terrible lizards". And though the most spectacular findings are nowadays made in North and South America, China, and Mongolia, the so called "dinosaur fever" began in the 19th Century in Europe, or more precisely in Great Britain, where the first dinosaurs – Megalosaurus and Iguanodon – were discovered and named.

In her book The Dinosaur Hunters, the title of which rather makes you think of stories about adventurous discoveries, Deborah Cadbury in fact relates a piece of history of science, to be exact, the beginnings of the sciences of palaeontology and geology in Europe. She does it in a way that lends this rather dry subject an unexpected interest: the book not only deals with inanimate stones and dead bones, but tells us something about the men who collected and studied them. The reader learns at least as much about those people as he learns about the fossils themselves. Though Gideon Mantell (who found the first ever Iguanodon) and Sir Richard Owen weren't at war with one another like a few decades later their American colleagues Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, museum director Owen did his best to disparage Mantell who had to make a living as a country doctor. On top of everything he stole part of Mantell's scientific fame and took it for himself.

Some readers may be surprised that a couple of the most important palaeontological discoveries in Great Britain were made by a woman, Mary Annings, who was the daughter of a carpenter from Lyme Regis. By collecting and selling fossils, she tried to escape poverty. As early as at the age of eleven, she went to the beach with her father to look for "serpent stones" (ammonites). Another personality of the history of British palaeontology is reverend William Buckland who was also professor of geology at the university of Oxford. In 1824 he described the jawbone of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur ever described as such.

The Dinosaur Hunters brings all those historical personalities to life, which makes it a fun read. I recommend it to everyone interested in the subject.

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Monika

Last changes: 15-11-03

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