The legacy of the Mastodon : the golden age of fossils in America / Keith Thomson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomson, Keith Stewart.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mastodons--North America.

Mastodons.

Mammoths--North America.

Mammoths.

Mammals, Fossil--North America.

Mammals, Fossil.

Paleontology--North America.

Paleontology.

Paleontology--United States--History.

Paleontology--United States--History--18th century.

Paleontology--United States--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (424 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The uncovering in the mid-1700s of fossilized mastodon bones and teeth at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, signaled the beginning of a great American adventure. The West was opening up and unexplored lands beckoned. Unimagined paleontological treasures awaited discovery: strange horned mammals, birds with teeth, flying reptiles, gigantic fish, diminutive ancestors of horses and camels, and more than a hundred different kinds of dinosaurs. This exciting book tells the story of the grandest period of fossil discovery in American history, the years from 1750 to 1890. The volume begins with Thomas Jefferson, whose keen interest in the American mastodon led him to champion the study of fossil vertebrates. The book continues with vivid descriptions of the actual work of prospecting for fossils--a pick in one hand, a rifle in the other--and enthralling portraits of Joseph Leidy, Ferdinand Hayden, Edward Cope, and Othniel Marsh among other major figures in the development of the science of paleontology. Shedding new light on these scientists' feuds and rivalries, on the connections between fossil studies in Europe and America, and on paleontology's contributions to America's developing national identity, The Legacy of the Mastodon is itself a fabulous discovery for every reader to treasure.

Contents:

Pt. one: The Jeffersonians

Fossil hunters on the frontier

Big Bone Lick

Franklin, Jefferson, and the incognitum

Jefferson's "great-claw" and a world about to change

The first American dinosaurs: an eighteenth-century mystery story

Fossils and show business: Mr. Peale's Mastodon

Pt. two: Fossils and geology

Fossils and extinction: dangerous ideas

Mary Anning's world

An American natural science

An American geology

Bad lands: no time for ideas

Dr. Leidy's dinosaur

Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden

Pt. three: Giant Saurians and horned mammals

Kansas and a new regime

Entry of the gladiators

Riding the rails

The first Yale college expedition

The competition begins

Buffalo land: who was Professor Paleozoic?

1872: the year of conflict

The case of the great horned mammals

Going separate ways

Two into four won't go

To the Black Hills

To the Judith River

Pt. four: Toward the twentieth century

The rise of dinosaurs

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Going public

1890: the end of the beginning

Appendixes

The geological column

Leidy on evolution

Cope on evolution.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-369) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-08860-2

9786612088605

0-300-15184-5

OCLC:

1024044235