I appear to be on an late 19th - early 20th century paleontology fieldwork kick right now regarding the books I am reading. I just finished Paul Brinkman's "The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush" book, which I found to be an enjoyable history of collecting Jurassic dinosaurs from the western U.S. by several institutions. At times I found it was difficult to follow the chronological order of the work being done, but overall the book is a solid offering of this important time in American vertebrate paleontology. For more see Brian Switek's recent review.
I am now starting "Bone Hunters in Patagonia" following John Bell Hatcher's work collecting fossil vertebrates in South America during the Princeton University expeditions of 1896-1899. This is supposedly an absolutely amazing narrative of an amazing collecting trip and I hope I enjoy it thoroughly because...
the next book in the stack is "Barnum Brown: the man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex" by Lowell Dingus and Mark Norell. Several colleagues have told me that this is an excellent book. I had actually started reading this book earlier in the summer and was enjoying it immensely, but stopped to read Paul Brinkman's book when it came out. Reading Paul's book got me very interested in John Bell Hatcher and thus I've found myself reading "Bone Hunters in Patagonia" before going back to the Barnum Brown book. I hope I'm not making a mistake here.
Overall, from what I have seen so far these are three great books covering the work of many great American early paleontologists.
37 minutes ago in History of Geology
"Bone Hunters in Patagonia" is a great read! My next project is going to be a book about Elmer Riggs in Patagonia. Should be an easier to follow narrative than SJDR, which, with its multitude of collectors and institutions, was a very difficult story to tell.
ReplyDeleteWait, Riggs was in Patagonia? What did he do there? Did publications come out of it?
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