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The Fossil Hunter
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The Fossil Hunter (2009) (edit title/settings)

by Shelley Emling (Author) (edit contributors)

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At a time when women were excluded from science, a young girl made a discovery that marked the birth of paleontology and continues to feed the debate about evolution to this day. Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton--of an... read more

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  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • fossils—Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a botanist and invertebrate zoologist.11 From his studies, he determined that some species had remained the same over millennia while others had changed.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • Georges Cuvier made waves during a 1796 lecture with a mind-blowing assertion: Some species have forever vanished from the face of Earth.8 It wasn’t evolution he believed in, but the idea that each species originated independently and remained unaltered until it became extinct.
    Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
  • In 1829 Gideon Mantell released the seminal paper that is still talked about today: “Age of Reptiles.”
    Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
  • Charles Lyell. Indeed, though he was a Christian, in the late 1820s Lyell became more determined than ever to “free the science from Moses.”
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • Mary’s discovery would eventually be called a Dimorphodon,
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • In 1828, Lyme Regis’s Blue Lias was being quarried in greater and greater quantities to meet the demand in London and other cities for
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • in America, Benjamin Silliman, the country’s most influential man of science in the early nineteenth century and Yale’s professor of chemistry from 1802 to 1853, was making his own arguments that science works only to reveal “the thoughts of God.” Today the proposition that the universe displays a creator’s intelligent design has provoked bitter debate throughout the United States. But in the early 1800s, no one in America dared deny intelligent design.
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • But Owen got his way and, on Easter Monday 1881—34 years after Mary’s death—the doors of London’s new Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road were finally thrown open,
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
  • In the nineteenth century, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct; any unusual curiosities were explained away as being from animals living undetected in a faroff region of the world. But the puzzling attributes of Mary’s fossil struck a blow at this belief and eventually helped pave the way for a real understanding of life before the age of humans.
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
  • In total, Birch’s collection brought in more than £400—comparable to nearly $50,000 today—all of which he handed over to the Annings.19
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First Sentence edit see section history

Pre-Victorian England exemplified a powerful period in the history of science, a time when one never-before-seen monster was being cajoled from its Jurassic tomb, drawn out into the light of day where it could blow holes through the Biblical account of the earth's history.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Acknowledgments
Prologue

1. Snakestones, Thunderbolts and Verteberries
2. A Fantastic Beast
3. An Unimaginable World
4. A Great Kindness
5. A Long Necked Beauty
6. The Hidden Mysteries of Coprolites
7. Finally, the Big City of London
8. An Amazing New Fish
9. Spilling Secrets
10. Esteemed Visitors
11. The Earth Moves
12. The Making of a Legend

Epilogue
Timeline
Notes
Index

Glossary edit see section history

  • verteberries: verterberries or crocodile teeth was the term used by Lyme Regis people to descibe some of the fossils found in the are. They were in fact individual vertebrae from unknown prehistoric creatures.
  • pattens: A protective overshoe, made of wood and metal, designed to keep feet out of mud and dirt.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Shelley Emling (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillian
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-0-230-61156-6
Page Count: 234

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: QE707.A56B75 1999
  • Dewey: 560.92

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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