Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party
eBook - ePub

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party

How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party

How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World

About this book

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, an “utterly delightful…hugely entertaining” (Air Mail) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.

In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, scientists unearthed enormous bones that reached as high as a man’s head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land—nor dreamed that they could all have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago.

In Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the early 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; moves to William Buckland, an eccentric geologist who filled his home with specimens and famously pieced together a prehistoric scene from the fossil record inside a cave; and then on to the controversial Richard Owen, the era’s best-known scientist, and the one who coined the term “dinosaur.”

“Exuberant” (Kirkus Reviews), entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and its own place within it.

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Yes, you can access Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Military & Maritime History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Introduction: A Shriek in the Night
  6. Chapter 1: “Dragons in Their Slime”
  7. Chapter 2: The Girl Who Lived
  8. Chapter 3: “The Most Amazing Creature”
  9. Chapter 4: An Epic Written in Chalk
  10. Chapter 5: “The Dreadful Clink of Hammers”
  11. Chapter 6: “It’s a Beautiful Day and the Beaches Are Open”
  12. Chapter 7: Trembling in the Dark
  13. Chapter 8: The Divine Calligrapher
  14. Chapter 9: The Apple of God’s Eye
  15. Chapter 10: Whales in the Treetops
  16. Chapter 11: Without a Trace
  17. Chapter 12: “None of the Advantages”
  18. Chapter 13: “Sister of the Above”
  19. Chapter 14: Ferns and Fox Hunters
  20. Chapter 15: Into the Temple of Immortality
  21. Chapter 16: Framed for Bliss
  22. Chapter 17: “A Delicate Toast of Mice”
  23. Chapter 18: Kirkdale Cave
  24. Chapter 19: In Nature’s Cathedral
  25. Chapter 20: “Quite in Love with Seaweeds”
  26. Chapter 21: William Paley Stubs His Toe
  27. Chapter 22: Here Be Dragons (and Giants and Cyclopses)
  28. Chapter 23: Looking into Medusa’s Eyes
  29. Chapter 24: Leibniz’s Unicorn
  30. Chapter 25: “The Grinders of an Elephant”
  31. Chapter 26: “The Terror of the Forest”
  32. Chapter 27: “The Very Extraordinary SKELETON”
  33. Chapter 28: Noah’s Ark
  34. Chapter 29: “A Cold Wind out of a Dark Cellar”
  35. Chapter 30: Sherlock Holmes Ponders a Bone
  36. Chapter 31: Bursting the Limits of Time
  37. Chapter 32: Boiling Seas and Exploding Mountains
  38. Chapter 33: Mayflies and Human History
  39. Chapter 34: Scattered by Desert Winds
  40. Chapter 35: Lizards in Scripture?
  41. Chapter 36: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  42. Chapter 37: Defunct Animals and Open Windows
  43. Chapter 38: The Mystery of the Moa
  44. Chapter 39: “The Invention of Dinosaurs”
  45. Chapter 40: “When Troubles Come, They Come Not Single Spies but in Battalions”
  46. Chapter 41: Return of the Happy World
  47. Chapter 42: Dinner in a Dinosaur
  48. Chapter 43: “It Is Like Confessing a Murder”
  49. Epilogue
  50. Photographs
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. About the Author
  53. Notes
  54. Bibliography
  55. Index
  56. Credits
  57. Copyright