[I (Paleopatti) have read this and recommend it highly. Not only because of the well-researched and highly interesting nature of the subject matter, but also the quality of the artwork. Not only the cover is an outstanding illustrative piece, but the drawings of the bear skulls (page 47) and the Hadrosaurus femur (page 70) are quite fine and tell a story in themselves. Oh, did I mention that these are my illustrious contributions to the book? Well worth checking out!] The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils?
Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries.
Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed. Adrienne Mayor, an independent scholar of natural history folklore and the early history of science, is the author of The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton) and Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs (Overlook).
Endorsements: "Adrienne Mayor has absolutely done it again. In Fossil Legends of the First Americans she has taken up exactly where she left off last time with The First Fossil Hunters. She has done a superb job of researching her topic and making it interesting. Just a wonderful job all around."-- Peter Dodson, author of The Horned Dinosaurs
"Engaging, enlightening, and most of all, educationally entertaining. We have precious few examples of Native American interpretation of prehistoric events as they have been passed down through the generations, and in this book Adrienne Mayor unveils several. In so doing, she opens up a new world."--Jack Horner, coauthor of Digging Dinosaurs, Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University
Jurassic Poop; What Dinosaurs (and Others) Left Behind by Jake Berkowitz - jb@jacobberkowitz.com and illustrated by Steve MackDad inspired 'Jurassic Park,' son inspires 'Jurassic Poop' Book reveals how ancient poop has the inside scoop on US past.November 15th, 2006 -- Twenty-five years ago American entomologist George Poinar's work on ancient insects in amber inspired Michael Crichton's futuristic thriller Jurassic Park. Now son Hendrik Poinar's groundbreaking work has inspired the world's first book on the science of fossil feces, Jurassic Poop. The new children's book by Canadian science writer Jacob Berkowitz reveals that America not only has the world's largest heap of ancient human leavings but that the study of coprolites, or fossil feces, is literally re-writing American history, including who attended the first Thanksgiving.Developed completely from original scientific sources, Paleontologist Karen Chin is the scientific advisor. Jurassic Poop is the first comprehensive book on coprolites, full of facts and stories that are intriguing to readers five to 100."When I saw my first coprolite ten years ago, I thought no way, how could something as soft as poop fossilize?," says Berkowitz. "But coprolites are found on every continent and from every geological time period. There's literally tons of fossil poop out there, and it's now recognized as priceless for helping scientists piece together the puzzle of ancient life." Jurassic Poop profiles the work of Hendrik Poinar, a professor at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Canada. He was the first ever to extract DNA from ancient feces. While his father's work in teasing DNA from insects in amber benefited from the revolutionary genetic technological advances of the 1980s -- particularly the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to duplicate and thereby identify DNA fragments -- Hendrik's benefited from medical advances. The technique used to extract DNA from coprolites uses a chemical developed for the treatment of diabetes-related complications."After being pooh-poohed by scientists for decades, coprolites have now been shown to be the best source of ancient DNA, better than bones and teeth," says Berkowitz. Hendrik Poinar is now able to identify not only a pooper's gender, but also critical genetic information that will help to uncover the very origins of modern humans.Berkowitz says coprolites even have something to say about one of the seminal stories in American history, the arrival of the Mayflower. The official Mayflower record says that the only animals on board were two dogs. But in the mid-1990s an archaeological excavation of a 17th century Boston privy revealed another story. The Mayflower was infested with at least 20 types of Old World beetles, stow-aways who quickly called America home -- and do to this day. Jurassic Poop also reveals that more than 1000 human coprolites have been collected from Hinds Cave in the Chihuahuan desert in southwest Texas, making the site the largest human coprolite cache ever found. The fossilized specimens were deposited by ancient Americans over the course of about 8000 years. The book notes that these human remains are about 95-per cent fibre. That's about 15 times the amount of fibre the average American eats today. Hendrik Poinar is now collaborating with Vaughn Bryant of Texas A&M University to extract genetic information from the Hinds Cave coprolites.
A must for every paleontologist. An exhaustive review and listing of all known dinosaur species and their geographic location. Contains outstandingdrawings and graphs.Read Chapter 22, "Basal Ceratopsia," in pdf format Released 2004 by the University of California Press: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2601001.html
When the The Dinosauria was first published more than a decade ago, it was hailed as "the best scholarly reference work available on dinosaurs" and "an historically unparalleled compendium of information." This second, fully revised edition continues in the same vein as the first but encompasses the recent spectacular discoveries that have continued to revolutionize the field. A state-of-the-science view of current world research, the volume includes comprehensive coverage of dinosaur systematics, reproduction, and life history strategies, biogeography, taphonomy, paleoecology, thermoregulation, and extinction. Its internationally renowned authors--forty-four specialists on the various members of the Dinosauria--contribute definitive descriptions and illustrations of these magnificent Mesozoic beasts.<o:p></o:p>
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The first section of The Dinosauria begins with the origin of the great clade of these fascinating reptiles, followed by separate coverage of each major dinosaur taxon, including the Mesozoic radiation of birds. The second part of the volume navigates through broad areas of interest. Here we find comprehensive documentation of dinosaur distribution through time and space, discussion of the interface between geology and biology, and the paleoecological inferences that can be made through this link. This new edition will be the benchmark reference for everyone who needs authoritative information on dinosaurs
ABOUT THE EDITORSDavid B. Weishampel is a Professor at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is coauthor, with D. E. Fastovsky, of The Evolution and Extinction of Dinosaurs (1996) and coauthor, with L. Young, of The Dinosaurs of the East Coast (1996). Peter Dodson is Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. He is the author of Horned Dinosaurs: A Natural History. Halszka Osmólska is Professor of Paleontology at the Paleobiological Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Adrienne MayorWith a foreword by Peter Dodson
Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants--these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact--in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.
As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.
Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology. As Peter Dodson writes in his Foreword, "Paleontologists, classicists, and historians as well as natural history buffs will read this book with the greatest of delight--surprises abound."
As found in: http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/6811.html
Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist, investigates the historical and scientific realities embedded in Greek and Roman myths. Her articles on ancient natural history have appeared in many scholarly and popular journals. She divides her time between Princeton, New Jersey, and Bozeman, Montana.
"The First Fossil Hunters brings together mythology, art, geology, and paleontology in a convincing manner. . . . Mayor's chronicles do more that entertain; as she contends, they also show that people of Greek and Roman times had a broad understanding of fossils as organic remains of extinct organisms . . ."--Tim Tokary, American Scientist
"Mayor tells a fascinating story of ancient encounters with fossils, setting modern palaeontology beside ancient art and literature . . ."--Helen King, Times Literary Supplement
The latest and greatest in-depth and exhaustive story of the "fossil" wars between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the rise of American Science.Crown Publishers, 2000, Order: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0517707608/103-8241549-4751852?v=glanceAmazon.comFeuds are common to all fields of human endeavor, but only scientists see them as integral to their work. Scientific progress is always contentious, as we are reminded by science writer Mark Jaffe in The Gilded Dinosaur, his delightful examination of the well-known war between paleontologists Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh in the context of the development of American science. Jaffe has delved deeply into the historical record to illuminate these large personalities and their struggle for access to physical and political territory on which to build their competing scientific empires. Fossil-hunting was inextricably linked with the expansion into the West, the explosion of industrial capitalism, and the new expression of America's status as a world power. Cope and Marsh, in part through their competition for scarce financial and scientific resources, forced the United States to build a scientific establishment combining elements of the public and private sectors.
Jaffe is careful with his details; though there are many of them, they always illustrate his themes and portraits rather than distracting from them. Instead of reproducing the legendary protracted newspaper battle in its entirety, he samples a few headlines and paragraphs, then explores the motives and reactions of the principals. Cope comes across as far more sympathetic than Marsh, but the reader is left with the sense that this reflects historical truth more than journalistic bias. How can you take two egos, thousands of tons of rocks and bones, and make a scientific infrastructure so sturdy that today's schoolchildren grow up with Apatasaurus? The Gilded Dinosaur explains it all. --Rob Lightner From Publishers WeeklyScience in general and paleontology in particular came of age in America during the second half of the 19th century. Two of the dominant figures of the time, E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh, were responsible for uncovering and naming most of the dinosaurs found in America while feuding with one another for all of their adult lives. Journalist Jaffe (And No Birds Sing) does an admirable job of bringing these two, as well as the myriad politicians and scientists they interacted with, to life. Rather than focusing narrowly on their feud, as does David Rains Wallace in his recent The Bonehunters' Revenge, Jaffe provides much more context for their disagreement and uses it to demonstrate the nature of the scientific enterprise. Both wanted sole control of the best fossils found in the American West and both coveted the attention that came with being the world's foremost paleontologist. Neither was above using political connections, from fellow scientists to the inhabitants of the White House during numerous administrations, to further their careers. Jaffe's epic history--covering a search for the bones of the largest animals ever to walk the earth; the trials, tribulations and governmental abuses surrounding the Indian Wars; the transition of science from an avocation to a profession; and the political machinations associated with pork-barrel funding of scientific expeditions--is as engaging as an adventure novel while providing insight into America's Gilded Age. Agent, David Black. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Princeton University Press, 1996,
Paper | 1998 | $26.95 / £17.50 | ISBN: 0-691-05900-4360 pp. | 6 x 9 | 6 color illus. 75 line drawings 4 mapsThe best and only overview of the ceratopsians. An engaging and readable natural science introduction to horned dinosaurs from the viewpoint of dinosaur paleontologist Peter Dodson. A veterinary anatomist extrordinaire, Dr. Dodson breaks the Triceratops anatomy into comprehensible pieces and traces the history of American Paleontology. Gorgeous illustrations and drawings by Wade Barlowe and Bob Walters. - Patti Kane-Vanni Order: http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/5914.htmlThe horned dinosaurs, a group of rhinoceros-like creatures that lived 100 to 65 million years ago, included one of the greatest and most popular dinosaurs studied today: Triceratops. Noted for his flamboyant appearance--marked by a striking array of horns over the nose and eyes, a long bony frill at the back of the head, and an assortment of lumps and bumps for attracting females--this herbivore displayed remarkable strength in its ability to fight off Tyrannosaurus rex. It was also among the last dinosaurs to walk the earth. In telling us about Triceratops and its relatives, the Ceratopsia, Peter Dodson here re-creates the sense of adventure enjoyed by so many scientists who have studied them since their discovery in the mid-nineteenth century. From the badlands of the Red Deer River in Alberta to the Gobi Desert, Dodson pieces together fossil evidence to describe the ceratopsians themselves--their anatomy, biology, and geography--and he evokes the human dimension of their discovery and interpretation. An authoritative survey filled with many original illustrations, this book is the first comprehensive presentation of horned dinosaurs for the general reader.
Dodson explains first the fascinating ways in which the ceratopsians dealt with their dangerous environment. There follows a lesson on ceratopsian bone structure, which enables the reader quickly to grasp the questions that still puzzle scientists, concerning features such as posture, gait, footprints, and diet. Dodson evenhandedly discusses controversies that continue, for example, over sexual dimorphism and the causes of the dinosaurs' disappearance. Throughout his narrative, we are reminded that dinosaur study is a human enterprise. We meet the scientists who charmed New York high society into financing expeditions to Mongolia, home of Triceratops' predecessors, as well as those who used their poker winnings to sustain paleontology expeditions. Rich in fossil lore and in tales of adventure, the world of the Ceratopsia is presented here for specialists and general readers alike.
Reviews:
"Mr. Dodson's enthusiasm--his passion and love--for his subject is catching. . . . he writes with humor and grace . . . . It's as readable as a good letter from a friend you want to hear from. . . . and what a magnificent story he tells."--Stephen Goode, The Washington Times
"[Dodson] brings considerable wit and charm to his argument and gives an excellent sense of the practice of paleontology, as well as of the personalities involved in it."--Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating and comprehensive scholarly and personal survey . . . The author has successfully re-created the horned dinosaur in a fascinating book of facts, theories, and speculation. With extensive notes and excellent illustrations, this impressive volume is highly recommended. . . ."--Library Journal
"[Dodson] manages to explain many of the intricacies of dinosaur studies in jargon-free language, and where jargon is necessary the terms are clearly defined. Above all he helps to make the dinosaurs come alive--something that most paleontologists can only dream about."--Paul M. Barrett, The Times Higher Education Supplement
"It is perhaps surprising that no general work has ever been published about [the Ceratopsia], but the deficit is now redressed by Dodson's engaging, witty, and erudite new book. It is a labor of love by an admitted Oceratophile' (his term), an anatomist particularly skilled in biometrics.... The prose is graceful and never overly serious, and the footnoted asides are informative and amusing, so that even chapters on topics as dry as the necessary skeletal anatomy and principles of classification will be palatable to the non-specialist."--Kevin Padian, Science
Tracking Trilobites: Adventures in Paleontology, by Judy Ludquist, is the latest tome essential for the fossil collector. Focused on the less daunting, more fun aspects of these extinct hard-shelled critters, Judy creates an encompassing review that provides enough information and illustrations (over 150) to satiate the most rabid of trilobite aficionados. Check it out and respond!
