Palaeontology in Public Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time

About this book

Since the establishment of concepts of deep time in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, palaeontology has been one of the most high-profile sciences. Dinosaurs, mammoths, human ancestors and other lost creatures from Earth's history are some of the most prominent icons of science, and are essential for our understanding of nature and time. Palaeontology and its practitioners have had a huge impact on public understandings of science, despite their often precarious and unsteady position within scientific institutions and networks.

Palaeontology in Public considers the connections between palaeontology and public culture across the past two centuries. In so doing, it explores how these public dimensions have been crucial to the development of palaeontology, and indeed how they conditioned wider views of science, nature, the environment, time and the world. The book provides a history of vertebrate palaeontology through a series of compelling case studies. Dinosaurs feature, of course, including Spinosaurus, Winsor McCay's 'Gertie the Dinosaur' and the creatures of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. But there are also the small mammals of the Mesozoic, South American Glyptodons, and human ancestors like Neanderthals and Australopithecines. This book shows how palaeontology is defined by its relationship with public audiences and how this connection is central to our vision of the past and future of the Earth and its inhabitants.

Contents

List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction / Chris Manias

Part I: Extinct reptiles
2. Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton, and the case of palaeontological fiction / Richard Fallon and David Hone
3. Winsor McCay’s Gertie: the first living dinosaur / Victoria Coules
4. The ‘Spin’ in Spinosaurus: inventing a modern dinosaur superstar / Will Tattersdill and Mark P. Witton
5. A good officer: the long and remarkable career of the chimaeral Naosaurus / Ilja Nieuwland
6. From ‘Long’ to ‘Feng’: the marvellous new era of feathered dinosaur discoveries in modern China / Zichuan Qin and Lukas Rieppel

Part II: Mammals and hominins
7. Mammals, the measure of success? The legacy of ‘progress’ in natural sciences / Elsa Panciroli and Chris Manias
8. Literary beasts: fossil mammals, bone seekers and palaeontology in twentieth-century Argentina / Irina Podgorny
9. When fieldwork goes wrong, go public: George Gaylord Simpson and Anne Roe in Venezuela, 1938-1939 / Joe Cain
10. Shadows in the mirror: a discussion on understandings of Neanderthals and Australopithecines / Chris Manias, Rebecca Wragg Sykes and Lydia Pyne
11. Palaeoanthropology and the mass media: an entangled history / Oliver Hochadel
12. Pageants of life: conclusion and epilogue / Chris Manias

Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Chris Manias is Reader in the History of Science at King’s College London.